So, I love the Bible. It's cool. And I have two cool things to tell you. One of them, I thought I had told you about last year, but, it turns out I didn't.
Last year, I was reading Deuteronomy. Typically, it's not my most favorite book of the Bible, but that time, I saw something regarding the power of intercessory prayer.
In Deut. 9:4-6, Moses speaks to Israel about their upcoming crossing of the Jordan River, and about the people, the Anakims, who are great and tall, and how the Lord, not the Israelites, will get the credit for driving out the Anakims. Notice the phrase, three times repeated, "It is not because of your righteousness that the Lord is driving them out"
Vs. 4: "Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before you, 'Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,' but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you.
Vs. 5: "It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Vs. 6: "Know, then, it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess,d for you are a stubborn people."
The chapter continues with a recounting of the wickedness and stubborn rebelliousness of the Israelites.
Notice vs. 5, "It is because of the wickedness of the nations that Lord is driving them out."
From that, we see that the Israelites and the nations they were displacing were equally wicked.
So, if they were equally wicked, why did God destroy one nation and not the other? (Besides the reason that the Israelites are His chosen ones.)
We see that the Lord had indeed threatened to destroy the Israelites as well, but Moses, "fell down before the Lord, forty days and nights, which I did because the Lord had said He would destroy you. I prayed to the Lord and said, 'O Lord God, do not destroy Your people, even Your inheritance, whom You have redeemed through Your greatness, whom You have brought out of Egypt with a might hand..."
The reason the Lord didn't destroy the nation of Israel then and there was because one man fell down and prayed.
So, now I'm out of time and you'll have to wait for the other cool thing.
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