God's Bible Laws On Military Draft and Warfare

The God who created the heavens and the earth gave His Laws, Statutes, and Judgments to His People at Mt. Sinai, and promised if they would obey them, He would bless them. He, also, warned them scores of times, in His Holy Word that if they failed to obey His Laws, they would have tribulation and great distress.

In one place God summed up His warnings this way:

“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”
Deut. 36:19

Our Christian forefathers came to the North American continent with this Bible Law and wrote in their Colonial Charters that they would “obey God;” and that they would establish their civil laws “as near to the Laws of God as can be.”

To a great extent they did this, and most people of the world agree that the nation most blessed of God in recent centuries has been this America, which they founded.

Now America is beset with great “troubles,” and we hear much less of “blessings.” Is it possible we, in America, were blessed for “obedience to God's Laws,” but are now being “cursed for disobedience”?
Let us study one area of God's Law and see if we might learn something of benefit to ourselves and to our nation.

God Gave Laws For Warfare

This will be a study of the commandments God gave Israel as to how armies were to be raised and how warfare was to be conducted. Like His other laws, obedience would bring blessings to the nation, and disobedience, vexations and curses.

The First “Draft Law”

The Divine “draft law” was first given to the Israel Fathers at Mt. Sinai in Numbers 1:1-4

1. “And the Lord spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tabernacle of the congregation, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying,
2. “Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls;
3. “From twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel; thou and Aaron shall number them by their armies.
4. “And with you there shall be a man of every tribe; every one head of the house of his fathers.”
Numbers 1:1-4
The word translated “number,” in verse 3, should read “muster” (some Bibles show this) and this, was, in effect, the “mustering” of the army. This was not a “census” of the entire nation, as some believe, but was only the “mustering” (drafting) of those eligible for military service. This is made clearer from verses 47-49, where it was commanded that the males of the tribe of Levi were not to be numbered at that time with the other tribes. The Levites were “numbered” separately in Numbers 3:14-16, “every male from a month old and upward.” The Levites were then trained, not to be soldiers, but to do the service of the tabernacle and to be the civil servants of the nation.

Also, the census of the whole nation was made later in Numbers 3:40-43, when God told Moses to “number all the firstborn of the males of the children of Israel from a month old and upward.”

It is, therefore certain, that this “numbering” in the first chapter of all males of 20 years and up, (except the tribe of Levi) who were able-bodied enough “to go forth to war” was very definitely the “drafting” of these males into military service.

In verse 4, the “heads” of each tribe, who were commanded to stand by Moses and Aaron while this “mustering” was being done, would compose, what we now would call the “draft board.” They would be responsible men in the community whose job was to verify the age and the physical condition of the “inductees.”

Our early Colonies followed this Bible Law quite-closely in setting up what they called “The Militia.” All males were then trained in warfare so that, in the event of hostilities, this vast reservoir of trained males was available for immediate “mustering for defense.” We still retain a part of this Biblical practice.
As we see here and later, there was no plan for a large, permanent army. The army would always come in time of danger from the whole citizenry and would be loyal to it, rather than to any current “general” or “king.”

Also, no females were “numbered” by God for His armies, nor were females ever “mustered” for war by our European ancestors. Up until late in the 20th Century, neither have our own people ever considered doing such a foolish thing. We knew that neither God's Law nor English “common law” allowed the authorities to require females to serve in the nation's armed forces.

The Conduct of War

The Book of Deuteronomy has one chapter (Deut. 20) which gives God's Laws on warfare. It is, therefore binding on His People, and any nation which fails to observe these commands risks the displeasure of God Almighty and defeat in warfare. We will reprint the entire chapter below, with an explanation after each verse or passage. Please consider the explanation closely, reading again the verses themselves, if there is any question.

God and
The Priest and Chaplins

1. When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them; for the Lord thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

This is a simple assurance that God Almighty is always with His People.

2. And it shall be, when ye are come nigh unto the battle, that the priest shall approach and speak unto the people,

3. And shall say unto them, Hear, O Israel, ye approach this day unto battle against your enemies; let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them;

4. For the Lord your God is he that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.

From these verses we get our military “chaplains” (priests) who are to encourage the soldiers to bravery. Our Race has always had priests with its armies, and it is only in recent years that they are being downgraded and, in some instances are being ordered not to speak to the soldiers in the Name of Israel's God, Jesus Christ. Any such order, or the removal of chaplains, would be a violation of the very beginning of God's military Laws.

Deferments

5. And the officers shall speak unto the people, saying, What man is there that hath built a new house and hath not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in battle, and another man dedicate it.

Here begins the list of those who are to be “deferred” (delayed) from actual combat service until certain conditions pass. In this verse, any man just establishing a home would be excused. Later, of course, he would be eligible again.

The “officers” here would be the men “of every tribe” of Numbers 1:4 or the “elders” appointed, according to Exodus 18. Today, that would be the general officers approved by the Congress. Field grade combat officers are elected by the soldiers, as will be shown later.

6. And what man is he that hath planted a vineyard and hath not yet eaten of it? Let him also go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle and another man eat of it.

Any man new in business or in farming, whose enterprise might fail if he were to be absent at that time, is excused —again, temporarily.

7. And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife and hath not taken her? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle and another man take her.

Men expecting to be married soon are deferred. We will, also, insert here a part of God's Law on marriage in Deut. 24, which defers new husbands for one year, after which they would again be eligible for combat.

5. When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business; but he shall be free at home one year, and he shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken.

Our own war experience has proven that taking newly-married men into war service often breaks up the marriage; whereas, older marriages are more stable and can weather the separation.

Actually, newly-married men and the catagories of males listed in verses 5 and 6 of Deut. 20 would all make poor soldiers in the stress of battle. Deferring them is not just an act of compassion on God's part for them; it takes out of the unit those whose personal burdens or anxieties would affect their ability to fight. They could be a liability to the army in combat, as many combat veterans of our wars would testify.

God's wisdom on this is easily-seen to be far above that which now governs our nation. Back to Deuteronomy 20:

8. And the officers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say, What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his heart.

This is most-enlightening to those who have been told we cannot defend our nation unless soldiers are “forced” to fight. Although God's Law provides for universal military training of all able-bodied men over 20 years of age, which in itself would eliminate much fear of combat, when the day of actual battle comes, those still fearful are sent home. The reason is simple: cowardice or panic in battle can easily affect nearby soldiers and cause them to “faint,” also. Any combat-experienced soldier can tell you of instances in battle where a few men “bugged out”, and it cost the lives of their comrades (and often the cowards') and sometimes defeat in battle.

This Bible principle is why officers always call for “volunteers” for patrols or especially hazardous military operations. Success depends on “no cowards.” Over 3,000 years ago God told Israel the fearful should not go into battle; our own experience has proven it to be true. He, also, told us how to eliminate them — just ask them! God's Law is simple, and it works.

9. And it shall be, when the officers have made an end of speaking unto the people, that they shall make captains of the armies to lead the people.
After all the men not eligible for combat are weeded out and sent home, the remaining men elect (yes, elect) their own officers to lead them into battle!

Since they were inducted by Tribes (in our case, by communities or states), and were trained with the same men, the men best qualified to be the leaders in combat situations would be known by the men, themselves. They could be expected to make much better choices than might some outsider.

It is, also, true that men will more willingly follow, and more willingly obey, a man they know and trust than they would a stranger or someone who is patently incompetent. Much of the hostility between officers and men, so common in our military today, would be eliminated by this method of choosing company-grade combat officers.

Our early Colonies followed this method of choosing field officers; as did our nation up through the Civil War. Men later elevated by the President to General status received their first commissions upon the vote of the men in the Militia when it was mustered. This electing of combat officers was phased out in the late 1800's, as was the process of sending only volunteers into combat; so that by World War I, our soldiers were not only compelled to go into battle with cowards, they were often led by officers who were chosen — not for their bravery and proficiency, but because they were the son, nephew or friend of someone who wanted to “work his way up the command.”

That God's way is best has been proven in many instances where the appointed officers were killed in combat and the soldiers rallied around a “natural leader,” and went on to literally snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat. God commanded Israel over 3,000 years ago that the soldiers were to choose their own combat officers. It makes good sense to anyone with combat experience. Why do we not listen?

The War Itself

Verses 10 through 15 have to do with foreign war:

10. When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.

11. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.

Before any hostile act is made against an enemy, they are to be given an opportunity to surrender. We misname it today a “declaration of war,” but it is the same thing. The “declaration of war” is to be a declaration that “if you do not surrender at once, we will make war against you.” General Douglas MacArthur issued such a declaration to the Red Chinese General, who had attacked across the 38th parallel during the Korean “police action,” calling upon him to surrender, or MacArthur would bomb all the bridges on the Yalu, over which the Chinese were supplied. President Harry Truman rebuked MacArthur for this, prohibited him from bombing the bridges, and later fired him. MacArthur was actually following this Scriptural command.

In recent years, we have, also, found out that Germany offered to surrender as early as the fall of 1944, which surrender was refused by our government. Japan offered to surrender in May of 1945. Again, our rulers refused to listen and went on bombing and burning their cities for many months. This was all in violation of God's commands and of our own national laws, which require the acceptance of surrender. Is it possible some of our troubles today are a judgment for our treatment of those people?

By the way, the command that the captured enemy “shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee,” does not mean they would be slaves. It means they would be subservient to the wishes of God's People, possibly being required to pay reparations for war damages. It would, also, mean they would have to give up all their heathen idols and worship the God of Israel. This is covered in other commandments, and since it is not related directly to the warfare itself, we will not take the time to cover it here.

12. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt beseige it.

Once the declaration of war (call to surrender) has been made to the city, and it does not surrender, then Israel is free to attack.

13. And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword;

14. But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.

15. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.


If a city continues to refuse surrender, when captured, every male citizen is to be slain by the captors. At first this sounds horribly cruel, and God has been called a “vicious” God by some who do not understand.

However, think on this for a moment. If we had done just that in Vietnam, calling in turn upon each city to surrender and accept our occupation, then to slay all males in the cities which refused, it is probable that after this had been carried out once or twice, the rest of the cities in Vietnam would have capitulated upon demand. Instead of ten years of war and two million casualties, including 250,000 of our own, there would have been a few weeks of war, a few thousand dead, and victory for our side.

Some of you have heard of Lt. Calley and the Mei Lai “massacre” in Vietnam. Calley and his patrol were refused entry into a small village in Vietnam and were fired on from the village. His patrol fought their way in, suffering many casualties. Calley, supposedly, then ordered his men to kill the villagers. The news media later wrote him up as a “murderer,” and he was eventually-arrested and sentenced to Federal prison.

Is it possible that some of our internal enemies realized that if our soldiers once began to do such things, the whole of S.E. Asia would have surrendered to us, and the war would have been ended in victory for our side, which they did not want? They, therefore, made an “example” of Lt. Calley to keep other soldiers from following his example in combat.

Americans overran and captured thousands of Red Chinese soldiers during the last year and a half of the Korean War. This author had American soldiers tell him, “If we captured Chinese soldiers and found they had first used up all their ammunition and then surrendered, we just killed them.” In the rage of battle they instinctively followed God's Law.

16. But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth;

17. But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.

Verses 10 through 15 were the commandments on how to conduct warfare in distant cities. These are now the Law for warfare against cities (territories) which God intended His People to occupy permanently. When this was first given, it meant the cities and the land of the Canaanites, and they were all to be killed or driven out. (See also Deut. 7:1,2; Deut. 9:1-3; and Deut. 12:1-3.)

Israel did not obey this command in Canaan, and God later punished them for it by making the Canaanites “snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes” (Joshua 23:13). Some day in the future we may find the Indian population of America becoming the same to us.

18. That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the Lord your God.

This was the reason the heathen were to be utterly-destroyed in Israel's new land; they would turn Israel from the true worship of Yahweh-Jesus, which they did.
In the late 1970's several American Governors had Indian “medicine men” offer “prayers” at their state capitols. One state actually-paid tax money to an Indian tribe to stage a “rain dance” to try and end a long drought. (It didn't work.) Is what happened in ancient Canaanland now happening in America?

19. When thou shalt besiege a city a long time in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them; for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life) to employ them in the siege;

20. Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued.

These verses prohibit any so-called “scorched earth” policy against an enemy. Such things as Sherman's “march to the sea” during the Civil War, in which he burned buildings and crops, killed all cattle, and sawed down orchards is expressly forbidden in this command. We, also, violated this Law of God in our saturation bombings of Japan and of Germany in World War II, where we destroyed everything under our bombers. It should give us pause to consider that in Vietnam we “defoliated” their trees and food crops with Agent Orange, and now we find our own people are suffering disease and birth defects from it! Is that judgment on us for our violation of His Law?

Conclusion

From this study we can know for certain several things:

1. God's military laws are wise, just, humane, and effective. Not one thing in His Law can we find which would not be effective in making warfare, both short and victorious for His People.

2. America is already in violation of almost every precept of God's Laws on the military draft and warfare, and

3. Now we are seeing the implementation of another blasphemy against the Holy Law of God by the impressment of female citizens into the military forces of our nation.

In the experience we have already had in recent years with women volunteers, we have seen them humiliated, degraded, overcome with liquor and drugs, seduced, and even raped and killed by male soldiers. What might happen to women in combat or upon capture by enemy soldiers is so obvious it needs no description here. Christian morality and our national conscience, if it were not so seared, would recoil in horror at the prospect.

Females are exempted from military service by God's Laws. Any person or nation, which forces women to serve in the military is committing a sin. The New Testament tells us in 1 John 3:4, “Sin is the transgression of the Law.”

Like Israel of old, America will come under the judging Hand of God for her manifold sins. If our rulers and our people add to their sins by the forcible drafting of our young women into our military, it will but make our guilt more grievous, and God's retribution more certain.

When King Saul failed to obey God's Law, God sent Samuel to him with this message:

“Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the Word of the Lord, He hath also rejected thee from being king.”
1 Samuel 15:23

Saul was deposed from his throne. Because of our continual sin, will we also be treated as the heathen who practice witchcraft and worship idols?

May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob use this study of His Law for the good of His People and for His Glory, and may He have Mercy upon His America-Israel and turn us from our wicked ways. We pray this in Jesus Christ.

Special To American Women

You have now seen that God's Laws in the Christian Bible exempt females from any kind of military service. The Constitution of the United States and that of various states, our own customs, traditions and our heritage of several centuries of English common law give our government no right, authority, or permission to impress females into any form of government service. Several thousand years of our history in Europe give us no record of any such thing, except under the most cruel of dictatorships. The history of the world tells us that none but the basest of men have ever stooped so low as to attempt to use women to wage war.

Any female who is a believer in God's Word in the Christian Bible is automatically-exempt from military service and should be classed as a “conscientious objector” by the government.

Any who wish to claim such status in order not to be drafted into military service are welcome to use this paper for that purpose or to contact our Church for further information. We will give you whatever help we can. In Christ,
Pastor Emry

_______________

Monday, Aug. 20 (Psych Central) — A new survey of Air Force women deployed during the Iraq war discovers about 20 percent of the women are experiencing at least one major symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

University of Michigan researchers also assessed the prevalence of family-work conflicts among the military women surveyed, and analyzed the impact of these conflicts on mental health and job functioning.

“We were surprised to find that work-family conflict is an independent and significant predictor of PTSD, above and beyond combat exposure,” said Penny Pierce, a colonel in the Air Force Reserve Program.
“This finding is important because there are things we can do to help minimize work-family stress and the toll it is taking on women in the military.”

“Since the Gulf War, the role of women in combat has been a subject of heated debate,” said Pierce.

“This study is the latest attempt to assess the impact of deployment-related stressors, including family separation, on military women, who now comprise 13 percent of our nation’s armed forces.”

Researchers found that women who experienced higher levels of family-work conflict were more likely to have symptoms of depression and anxiety, and were also less likely to feel they could cope with daily demands and responsibilities.

“We cannot hope to take away the stress of combat, but the additional stress caused by family-work conflicts can be modified,” said Pierce.
“Steps can be taken to reduce the anxiety and depression of service women who are worried about what is happening on the home front. In the near future, we hope to identify some areas where we can intervene to help reduce this source of stress.”

A related study of Air Force men that is now underway will establish the levels of wartime stress and of family-work conflict men are experiencing, Pierce noted, as well as its relation to their mental health and ability to perform their jobs.

In a similar U-M study of women serving during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Pierce and Vinokur found that the family-work conflict women veterans experienced was greater than that found in representative community samples of the time.

Source: University of Michigan


(Extracted from article — Editor)

RETURN