Reprinted with permission from Baptist Bulletin Mar/Apr 2013. All rights reserved.
Troubling headlines
Recent incidents of genocide (the systematic killing of ethnic or religious groups) and ethnic cleansing (the forced deportation of ethnic or religious groups):
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1991 450,000 Palestinians expelled by Kuwait in retaliation for the PLO’s support of Saddam Hussein
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1993 170,000 Croatians and non-Serbs murdered or deported by Serbian rebels led by Slobodan Miloševic
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1999 800,000 Albanians flee their homes during the Kosovo War
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1994 As many as 1,000,000 Tutsi killed by Hutus in the Rwandan genocide
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2000 200,000 East Timorese killed or expelled from Indonesia after voting for independence in a 1999 referendum
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2003 450,000 from various black ethnic groups killed and another 2 million expelled from the Darfur region of Sudan
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2008 200,000 Karen and 120,000 other refugees displaced from their Burma (Myanmar) homes, fleeing to Thailand
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2012 400,000 people displaced in dispute between Bodos and Bengali-speaking Muslims of Assam, India
Problem: How should a believer respond to accusations about genocide in the Old Testament? Does the Bible encourage genocide for religious purposes?
