And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations, that they made war with Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar).
Genesis 14:1-2
And he said to his people, "Look, the people of the children of Israel [are] more and mightier than we; come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and [so] go up out of the land."
Exodus 1:9-10
Then it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God did not lead them [by] way of the land of the Philistines, although that [was] near; for God said, "Lest perhaps the people change their minds when they see war, and return to Egypt." So God led the people around [by] way of the wilderness of the Red Sea. And the children of Israel went up in orderly ranks out of the land of Egypt.
Exodus 13:17-18
The LORD [is] a man of war; The LORD [is] His name.
Exodus 15:3
For he said, Because the LORD hath sworn [that] the LORD [will have] war with Amalek from generation to generation.
Exodus 17:16
And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, [There is] a noise of war in the camp.
Exodus 32:17
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. . . And the children of Reuben, Israel's eldest son, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, by their polls, every male from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war; Those that were numbered of them, [even] of the tribe of Reuben, [were] forty and six thousand and five hundred.
Of the children of Simeon, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, those that were numbered of them, according to the number of the names, by their polls, every male from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war; Those that were numbered of them, [even] of the tribe of Simeon, [were] fifty and nine thousand and three hundred.
Of the children of Gad, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war; Those that were numbered of them, [even] of the tribe of Gad, [were] forty and five thousand six hundred and fifty.
Of the children of Judah, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war; Those that were numbered of them, [even] of the tribe of Judah, [were] threescore and fourteen thousand and six hundred.
Of the children of Issachar, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war; Those that were numbered of them, [even] of the tribe of Issachar, [were] fifty and four thousand and four hundred.
Of the children of Zebulun, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war; Those that were numbered of them, [even] of the tribe of Zebulun, [were] fifty and seven thousand and four hundred.
Of the children of Joseph, [namely], of the children of Ephraim, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war; Those that were numbered of them, [even] of the tribe of Ephraim, [were] forty thousand and five hundred.
Of the children of Manasseh, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war; Those that were numbered of them, [even] of the tribe of Manasseh, [were] thirty and two thousand and two hundred.
Of the children of Benjamin, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war; Those that were numbered of them, [even] of the tribe of Benjamin, [were] thirty and five thousand and four hundred.
Of the children of Dan, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war; Those that were numbered of them, [even] of the tribe of Dan, [were] threescore and two thousand and seven hundred.
Of the children of Asher, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war; Those that were numbered of them, [even] of the tribe of Asher, [were] forty and one thousand and five hundred.
Of the children of Naphtali, throughout their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war; Those that were numbered of them, [even] of the tribe of Naphtali, [were] fifty and three thousand and four hundred.
These [are] those that were numbered, which Moses and Aaron numbered, and the princes of Israel, [being] twelve men: each one was for the house of his fathers. So were all those that were numbered of the children of Israel, by the house of their fathers, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war in Israel; Even all they that were numbered were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty.
Numbers 1:3, 20-46
"When you go to war in your land against the enemy who oppresses you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets, and you will be remembered before the LORD your God, and you will be saved from your enemies.
Numbers 10:9
So Moses spoke to the people, saying, "Arm some of yourselves for war, and let them go against the Midianites to take vengeance for the LORD on Midian. A thousand from each tribe of all the tribes of Israel you shall send to the war." So there were recruited from the divisions of Israel one thousand from [each] tribe, twelve thousand armed for war.
Then Moses sent them to the war, one thousand from [each] tribe; he sent them to the war with Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, with the holy articles and the signal trumpets in his hand. And they warred against the Midianites, just as the LORD commanded Moses, and they killed all the males. They killed the kings of Midian with [the rest of] those who were killed--Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian. Balaam the son of Beor they also killed with the sword. . . But Moses was angry with the officers of the army, [with] the captains over thousands and captains over hundreds, who had come from the battle. . . And levy a tribute for the LORD on the men of war who went out to battle: one of every five hundred of the persons, the cattle, the donkeys, and the sheep. . . The booty remaining from the plunder, which the men of war had taken, was six hundred and seventy-five thousand sheep...
Then the officers who [were] over thousands of the army, the captains of thousands and captains of hundreds, came near to Moses; and they said to Moses, "Your servants have taken a count of the men of war who [are] under our command, and not a man of us is missing. . . (The men of war had taken spoil, every man for himself.)
Numbers 31:3-8, 14, 28, 32, 48-49, 53
And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.
Matthew 24:6-8
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh...
2 Corinthians 10:3
Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet [fn] you do not have because you do not ask.
James 4:1-2
Beloved, I beg [you] as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul...
1 Peter 2:11
And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him [was] called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. . . And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.
Revelation 19:11, 19
And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
Revelation 12:7-11
In the Name of "Civil Liberties"
Joseph Sobran | www.sobran.com | 28 June 2001
The American Civil Liberties Union has been in business so long that it's a miracle that we have any civil liberties left. Though revered by the media as the "watchdog of the Bill of Rights," the ACLU has always been devoted to the destruction of the Constitution. And still is.
Just the other day, the ACLU's Hawaii branch scrapped plans to invite Justice Clarence Thomas to speak. One ACLU board member compared Thomas to Hitler and called him "an anti-Christ."
Such vilification recalls the ACLU's origins as a fellow-traveling pro-Soviet organization, when ideological enemies were slandered in the roundest terms, fascist being a favorite epithet. It's telling that Thomas is likened to Hitler rather than Stalin: during the 1930s, the ACLU was full of Stalinists, even on its national board. It reluctantly removed some of them when Stalin made his shocking pact with Hitler in 1939.
It later apologized for purging itself of such flagrant apostles of totalitarianism, but it has never explained how men like William Z. Foster, America's leading Communist, could be working for Joe Stalin and the Bill of Rights at the same time. Cynics like Foster were prating about constitutional rights in America, knowing that in Russia, meanwhile, Stalin was torturing and murdering millions who enjoyed no civil liberties or legal protections whatsoever.
As Eugene Lyons wrote in his 1941 book The Red Decade: "The presence of Stalin's henchmen on an American organization of this type was an irony that no amount of sophistry could erase." It's only ironic if you're naive enough to assume that the ACLU has anything to do with liberty.
But the Reds and their fellow-travelers specialized in appropriating venerable words for their causes and front groups, which were always "liberal," "progressive," "democratic," and the like. One outfit of American volunteers who fought for Stalin in the Spanish Civil War was called the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. The old words and symbols were used to fool the public, while the leftists were fighting for the very opposite of their professed aims.
Today the ACLU is laboring to force the Boy Scouts of America to accept homosexual scoutmasters. What happened to the freedom of association, which the ACLU has always claimed for Communists? Isn't Scouting a "valid alternative lifestyle"? Aren't private organizations allowed to set their own standards and live by their own rules? And shouldn't a group devoted to civil liberties be fighting against state coercion, rather than for it?
Communism as we once knew it is gone, but not the sort of people who supported it while it lasted. And they still use the same old semantic tricks, such as using phrases like civil liberties and civil rights while fighting for abridgments of liberty and individual rights.
Though its name appeals to our desire for limited government, the ACLU really stands for enlarged government power. Always has, and always will. It hates Clarence Thomas because he sincerely favors what the ACLU itself only pretends to favor: strictly constitutional government. The hypocrite recognizes the honest man as his deadly enemy.
And leftists have always used the coarsest smear tactics against their enemies. Even though Stalin is no longer around to supervise the vilification campaigns, that hasn't changed either. Political libel is an abiding legacy of the Red Decade.
Of course the ACLU has no obligation to welcome Thomas, but then the Boy Scouts have no obligation to welcome homosexuals. This is so basic you wonder why there's any argument about it. But the Stalinist impulse to subjugate every free institution remains; it neither began nor died with Stalin.
We can be grateful that the crudity of the Red Decade is long past, with its brutal one-man tyranny backed by adulating hordes of willing servitors. But today we face a more bland, refined, and subtle version of the desire for an all-powerful state, in which every institution is politicized.
Using lawyers rather than firing squads, leftist groups like the ACLU have perfected their techniques. The size and scope of government power are still increasing, under both Republican and Democratic rule.
If the Scouts can be forced to take on homosexual scoutmasters, why shouldn't churches and synagogues be told what kind of clergy they may have? Will the ACLU draw the line at imposing "civil liberties" on religious institutions? Why should it?