THESIS 49: WAR AND "THE SWORD"

"Sword"[183] does not refer to individual penal sanctions (e.g., "capital punishment"). The shedding of a criminal's blood[184] performed the functions of all other ritual acts of bloodshed, prefiguring the atonement for sin secured by Christ's blood in His execution.[185] "The Sword" refers to national "capital punishment" (i.e., a shedding of blood[186]), which is the sacrifice of a sinful people who will not accept the Lord's sacrifice and righteousness by faith. The sword of vengeance, which belongs to God (#80), is the warfare whereby God slaughters a disobedient people in a fiery sacrifice,[187] relegating these idolatrous self-sacrifices and their dreams of Empire to the "dung-heaps" of history.[188]

Exposition

Capital Punishment: A Debate

Purging Vengeance From Our Lives

Implications

What this Thesis means; how it should affect your life; how our lives should affect the world.

Clarifications

What this Thesis does NOT mean; how it should NOT affect your life; how the Old World distorted the truth.

Confirmations

How "mainstream" evangelical or orthodox commentators have confirmed this Thesis (without accepting the overall paradigm)

Deliberations

Readers' questions, complaints, allegations, flames, threats

         -- answered, adjusted, denied, blessed, filed.

Prooftexts

183. cf. Romans 13:4

184. Genesis 9:4-6

185. Numbers 35:31,33; Deuteronomy 21:1,9

186. Ezekiel 35:5-6

187. Deuteronomy 32:43 [NIV]; Judges 20:40; Isaiah 34:5-8; Jeremiah 46:10; Ezekiel 39:17-20; Zephaniah 1:7-8; Matthew 23:35 + Revelation 19:3

188. Exodus 29:14; Leviticus 16:27; Zephaniah 1:17-18

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