A lot of Christians find it very difficult to reconcile the old testament God to the one in the new testament. I mean, how can the God who comes off as angry, vindictive, ruthless, raining fire and brimstone be same with the loving, patient and forgiving new testament God.
How?
So many are confused as to what to believe.Same God?
Is there a consistency in personality?
Did God change along the line or with the coming of Christ. I believe every Christian has asked these questions at some point in their life (I have). In fact, I always knew God had to be the hero in all of these narrative He just had to be good but I never knew how to explain it to myself talk more of others. A lot of people have also turned away from God because they couldn't come to an understanding of this. Today, we will be answering questions that have been asked regarding this. As time goes on, we will treat each point as a topic on its own gradually.
I will like to say this before we start,
*God is Good
*God is Love
*God Did not create evil
*God is not responsible for any evil/wickedness in the world
*God has no atom of wickedness in Him.
God Did not create evil. Remember, after creation God looked at ALL He created and they all looked good. He saw that they were good. Sin/evil could never have been hidden in all that goodness.Sin and all it brings came as a result of fallen creatures. God never intended for an evil world or one filled with sin, God wanted/wants man to be just like Him.
For us to understand the full extent of Grace, we must be able to understand God's Holy Wrath against Sin and His (Righteous) judgement of those who engage in sin. A lot of what we term as God being evil is His Holy Wrath/Righteous judgement in display. All the questions we had during the week are questions about God's Character and understanding His person helps us to know why some things are;
God is just and holy.
Gods anger/wrath is righteous in nature
Gods anger is Holy distaste towards EVERYTHING that is contradictory to His nature; Holiness*
Romans 1:18 But God's angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth.
Here we see what brings God's wrath, wrong doing. Wrong against what?Wrong against that which is Just? God's anger/Wrath is not bad,of course it looks bad to the sinner. But no, God's wrath is His love in action against Sin. I once read somewhere that God's wrath is a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil. If there is no judgement of evil, God would not be God. His Holy nature which is in contrast to Sin justifies His wrath towards sin and sinful men.God's nature and character has remained Constant from the old testament to the new. He is the same righteous God. His Holy anger will someday be unleashed upon the world.
Questions and answers
We have 12 main questions with some part questions in them also.
Question 1
So I’ve heard bible teachers say God was not responsible for the evil in the Old Testament. E.g the children of Israel constantly being given into the hands of oppressors when they sinned against God.
My question is, did those who write the account of the Old Testament also misinterpret all the laws and punishments God wrote out, for those who walked in disobedience?
If God isn’t evil, why ask people to stone,shoot,kill etc when they walk in disobedience?
Answer
To start with, the bible is not the revelation of God, Jesus is.Of a truth, some people in the old testament had a flawed interpretation of the person of God and/or His actions (We will see some of them as we answer the remaining questions)
But I say to you, there is no Misinterpretation of laws/command of God.
All Scripture (though written by men who might not have a full understanding of God's nature) is God-breathed and useful for shaping our lives. Useful for our living.
Do you think God will ever allow an error be passed down as a tool for shaping lives? It took long before these manuscripts became the bible. It would have been destroyed. God would have destroyed everything.This brings us to the question *Killing of people when they walk in disobedience.
Will use the following examples.
Laws of the land.
If you kill, you will be arrested and most likely the judge will sentence you to death if found guilty.
Is the Judge guilty of killing the man who disobeyed the laws of the land?
Is the judge evil for pronouncing or bringing to actualization the consequences of breaking that law?
Let's use the Student Illustrative.
You write an exam and fail. Most students will say, "the professor failed me" or "the professor gave me F o".But it's the student that failed to meet up to the standard used as a yardstick of judgement. So we can't blame the professor
Next is
The Law and its implications
The law came with consequences.The law is required for people to live right and not commit atrocities.Every body, country, organization has laws and rules governing them.
When people go against these laws and they are to pay the penalty, is it not the person that erred we blame? Do we blame the sitting president for the carrying out of this law? Do we call the judge evil?
NO.
There is a reason there are laws. Laws are there to actually protect citizens.these laws are for our own benefits.If we see cases where countries were destroyed in the bible, you will see mention of their atrocities.It is always because people did something that was against the law (based upon God's Holy nature).
But when you take cities in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you must kill everyone. You must completely destroy all the people—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. The Lord your God has commanded you to do this. So then they will not be able to teach you to sin against the Lord your God or to do any of the terrible things they do when they worship their gods.*
Deuteronomy 20:16-18
Destroy the people who sin so they will not also teach others to sin. Does it sound like our cry for rapists to be brought to be book so it can sound as a warning to Other rapists that they can't continue their evil ?
The Lord GOD says, “I don’t want evil people to die. I want them to change their lives so that they can live! “Now, maybe good people might stop being good. They might change their lives and begin to do all the terrible things that evil people have done in the past. (The evil people changed, so they can live.) So if those good people change and become bad, God will not remember all the good things they did. He will remember that they turned against him and began to sin. So they will die because of their sin. “You people might say, ‘The Lord isn’t fair!’ But listen, family of Israel. I am fair. You are the ones who are not fair!*
Ezekiel 18:23-25 ERV
God never intends for evil people to perish. He wants them to change their ways. Look at the Canaanites, God destroyed them.The plan to destroy them had always been there.But do you know God waited 400 years before?And so many Canaanite came to God within these period. For example Rahab. Rahab is even in the ancestral lineage of Jesus Christ
God gave the Canaanites enough time to change, to turn back before destroying them.More like before allowing them reap that which they sowed. The same is happening in the world today. Judgement is coming. Man has time to repent, to turn away from evil and turn to God
Some people will still blame God and call Him evil when judgement comes. And if we advocate for God to destroy immediately, Even you and I will not be standing.
God is Just
QUESTION 2
.
We know God is 100% good and if this is the case then these punishment laws and other events in the bible wasn't given by him.
On the contrary God is balanced. And though he is a good God he will punish where there is disobedience.
Biblical references
The place where He asked for an evil Spirit to go deceive through the prophets Ahab, so he could go into battle and die there. 1 kings 22:22. Second instance is where the Bible records An evil spirit coming from God to torment Saul. 1 Samuel 16:14. Now the question is,was it actually God who sent this Spirits as the Bible says or there is another explanation please?
Answer
God did not send any evil Spirit to Saul.
Let's read 1 Samuel 16:14
The Lord’s Spirit left Saul. Then the Lord sent an evil spirit to Saul that caused him much trouble.*
1 Samuel 16:14 ERV
God's spirit occupied Saul's body initially. God later withdrew His spirit (We all know why) so Saul's body became empty. Saul had lost his spiritual protection. His body became open for any evil Spirit passing by to enter.
God's withdrawal of His spirit is an open invitation for whatsoever spirit to come in since the house is now empty. Since God knew His withdrawal of His spirit is proportional to open invitation for demons, it is easy to translate this to God sending the evil Spirit. But that's not His doing. He only packed His bag and left.So God did not send any evil Spirit. The evil Spirit entered because God's spirit wasn't there. This part is one of the flawed interpretations of God in the bible.
it was automatically assumed that God sent that spirit.
Saul’s servants said to him, “An evil spirit from God is bothering you.*
1 Samuel 16:15 ERV
Saul's servant telling him it's an evil Spirit from God, did he even know God? This one is also not on God.
So in essence he let Hitler perpetrate evil?
God created man for His pleasure. God created Hitler, Terrorists, good people and bad people, all for His pleasure. And they were none of these things at creation.
Man has a will,Man has choice.To choose who or what they give pleasure.
God is happy when we choose the right path but He is not responsible for whatever choice we make.
He can make the Choice turn out for good also.But that choice is still ours to make. God's permission of men's choices (Both good and evil, especially evil) does not in anyway translate to His approval of those choices. Adam chose to eat of the forbidden tree.
God could have done some magic and appeared to toss the fruit away but He did not.
Does this mean God approves of Adam's choice/decision to eat the fruit? NO
Back to Hitler and the Holocaust.
The blame for this is solely on the shoulders of sinful humanity.
The Holocaust was a pursuit of sinful choices made by men deep in sin against God whose nature is Holy/Just.
Reading about the Holocaust is painful to be honest. What hurts me the most is this, Millions of people followed Hitler. And this was just few years after the World War 1. Do you know how devastating the first war was? How could people support Hitler and follow him to perpetrate such evil?
We want to blame God that didn't take part in the war. But what of the people that joined Hitler?The few people that still think He was on the right cause
Man's evil is never to be blamed on God.Man chose that path.And evil has consequences.
Consequences that sometimes hurt the innocent
So the question should be:
Why did men let Hitler perpetrate such evil?
Why did people support Hitler? Because they chose evil,And this choice is not on God.
God bless you all
Let us pray
Thank you for your word Lord.
Thank you for clarity
Thank you for speaking to us
Dear Lord, All we want is to know you.
If there is anything we still do not understand fully, please reveal all to us.
As we continue during the week, help us answer these questions rightly and also understand them.
Amen
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