GOD IS GOOD!!

–God is Good

DOES GOD BRING TRAGEDY FOR JUDGMENT?

Something is wrong with this picture?

IS GOD A KILLER?

(Luke 13:1-5)  And some were present at the same time reporting to Him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. And answering, Jesus said to them, Do you suppose that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things? I tell you, No. But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were sinners above all men who lived in Jerusalem? I tell you, No. But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

According to the Bible, the Tower of Siloam was an ancient tower in Siloam in south Jerusalem, which fell during the time of Jesus, killing 18 people.

Mentioned in the Bible

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus mentioned the tragedy when he was told about some Galilean insurgents who were killed by the Romans. Those who told Jesus this may have expected him to say that their deaths were punishment for their rebellious and belligerent behavior. Yet, in mentioning the collapse of the tower of Siloam, Jesus taught that death or tragedy can come upon anyone, regardless of how sinful they are.

The same with the account of the man born blind.

(Joh 9:1-4)  And passing by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, Master, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither has this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God might be revealed in him. I must work the works of Him who sent Me, while it is day. Night comes when no man can work.
In others words, he was saying to the disciples: This happened not because his parents  or himself sinned or because God put this on him so His works could be shown but the verse 6 gives us the answer.

Ok, it happened, now the works of God, the God of light/goodness can now be manifested. (paraphrased)

Recently, we’ve heard what many have had to say about judgment, how God is judging a sinful nation that operates on a worldly system... how a Holy God MUST pour out judgment on the United States because of our many sins. For many, these words appeal to their sense of justice, it only makes sense that God would have to send judgment. Right?

The issue is NOT whether the United States as a nation deserves judgment. Obviously we do for slaughtering the unborn, legislating God out of the workplace and schools, immorality, pride, and the list can go on. The TRUE issue at hand is the finished work of the cross of Jesus Christ. The true issue is whether Jesus Christ fulfilled His purpose and destiny. 

Note this Scripture:
“Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world...” (John 9:39); “NOW is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” (John 12:31) The word translated as ‘now’ is nun in Greek, it means present or immediate. Two thousand years ago, just prior to His crucifixion and speaking ABOUT His crucifixion, Jesus Christ Himself said, “NOW, presently, immediately, is the judgment of this world.” 

The word translated as ‘world’ is cosmos in Greek, and is used in referring to the ‘world-system’, rather than the terra-firma earth we stand upon. The full weight of the judgment of God for sin was summed up and given full expression in the Christ-event (the crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ). The world has BEEN judged for sin, declared guilty, and the full judgment poured out upon the only Begotten Son. “We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted... and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us ALL.” (Isaiah 53:6); “For He hath made Him to BE SIN for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”(2 Corinthians 5:21) 

Those who preach a sin-conscious gospel of judgment, whether knowingly or not, deny the absolute victory of the cross of Jesus Christ. 

Today, just as it was in Jesus’ time, some hear the Voice... and some say it thundered (John 12:29). Thunder is symbolic of judgment (Exodus 19:20), and there are those today who only hear thunder and have missed the Voice of the Father declaring the ultimate glorification of His Name in the FINISHED work of the Cross. 

The world translated as ‘judgment’ is krisis in Greek, from which we get the word crisis. In a crisis, whatever kingdom is established within us will manifest. The Father certainly utilizes crisis in advancing His Kingdom, as we are seeing today. 

Note this verse: (1Jn 4:17)  In this is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment/crisis, that as He is, so also we are in this world.

Certainly the Father is utilizing these crisises that we are encountering to bring a clear distinction between those who hear the ‘Voice’ and those who hear ‘thunder’. If you’re looking for judgment, you will find it at the cross of Jesus Christ... the world is already judged. “But he who does not believe is judged ALREADY; he has ALREADY been convicted; has ALREADY received his sentence... he is condemned for refusing to let his trust rest in Christ’s name. The basis of the judgment lies in this: that the Light has come into the world, and people have loved the darkness rather than and more than the Light, for their works were evil.” (John 3:18-19 Amplified Bible) I believe we have yet to fully comprehend the complete victory of the Cross of Jesus Christ. 

So, what do YOU hear? Are you listening to others talk about ‘thunder’?... If so, I encourage you to quiet yourself and listen for the ‘Voice’. Are you hearing the ‘Voice’ proclaim the finished work of the cross?... If so, pray for those who only hear the thunder. “For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.” (Luke 9:56) 

God is using these days of crisises. But He did not create them.

(Rom 5:19-21)  For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous. But the Law entered so that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, so that as sin has reigned to death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

These are great opportunities for the greatest evangelism surge the world has ever known.

What to do when crisis comes?

It is when a crisis comes to you and me — a sudden sorrow, a sudden disaster — that we realize how separatist we are in our thinking.

The usual thing we say when a crisis hits us is, “God permitted it.” That means that God is up there and we are underneath. But God isn’t up there at all! He is within. I never lift my eyes one single time to heaven to try to find Him up there, do you? I don’t waste my breath, my sight, or anything else. Why should I waste my time trying to get a Person to come down when He lives within me? I can see Him where He is, in a common bit of human flesh redeemed in His precious blood, packed full of the Holy Spirit.

This makes my whole attitude to life different. Once I recognize that God is joined as one with me, I no longer try to find Him or get Him to come and rescue me.

A crisis comes to me. No, no — it doesn’t! It comes to us. Not to me, but to us. And I’m a mighty little part in the us, while He’s a mighty big part. It comes to Him. And if it comes to Him, He doesn’t just permit it, He means it to come. Well, if He means it to come, He’s going to turn it out for His own purposes. So what is my attitude? “Come on Lord, handle it now. Praise the Lord, it’s perfect! Carry it out now — I’ll watch You.” And it’s a great watching life. We sit on the side lines and clap when the goals are kicked.

We’re caught out ninety nine times out of a hundred. We say, “Why did God allow that? He’s up there, and poor me down here.” No, I’m not. I’m in the heavenly places, if I could but recognize it. But I’m caught out almost every time. I’m so familiar with the separated outlook, I can hardly look upon life from the union point of view. That is where my shocks and my sorrows come. I look at life from separation. I begin wondering: was it God? was it the devil? was it this? was it that? Instead of seeing that it happened to us, and that He meant it to be. When I see that, it changes everything.

Let me also say this:

GOD IS NOT ANGRY WITH YOU

Because of what Christ accomplished on the cross, it’s impossible for God to be angry with humanity? I’m not saying He has never gotten angry. But we often forget that a big shift has taken place because of the cross. We all know Isaiah 53 the famous messianic passage of Isaiah. But we often stop reading there. As we keep reading we come into Isaiah 54 where God says the following in verse 9 For this is like the waters of Noah to Me; For as I have sworn That the waters of Noah would no longer cover the earth, So have I sworn that I would not be angry with you, nor rebuke you.” Isaiah 54:9

That’s right… God has SWORN never to be angry with us or to rebuke us in Christ!  As Isaiah explains the fruit of Christ’s death on the cross, he states that God will never get angry with us! Nor will He rebuke us! We seem to struggle with this concept in the church, for some reason we love the angry God. People show this by just how angry they get over the saying “God is in a good mood.”

IS GOD REALLY IN A GOOD MOOD?

Say that phrase around an evangelical Christian and prepare to get bashed over the head with 100 random OT Bible verses. Hell hath no fury like an evangelical who is told their angry God might not exist. But the truth is that God is in a good mood. His work of reconciling man to Himself on the cross has put Him in an eternal good mood! Sin can never again stand in the way of us enjoying Him and Him enjoying us…That is unless you choose to believe that sin is still an issue to God. If you think God is mad at you, don’t be surprised if you end up viewing Him as an angry God. We have done this since time began. We have made God in our image.

GOD IS BIGGER THAN WE THINK

But God is so much bigger than we are. While sin was insurmountable for us it was more than surmountable for God. God’s not worried about sin. Sure it was a huge deal. But our emphasis must be on the “was”. Sin is not the issue any more. Our faith is the issue. We must embrace the fact that God has overcome sin. That He lavishly loves us and accepts us in the midst of our sin. If we do this, we will discover a God who is much better than we could ever have imagined. A God who is not angry with us but rather loves us so much that sin got what was coming to it!

WHO’S YOUR DADDY?

So my question to you is, do you have an angry God who is counting your every sin and demanding you change? Or do you have a loving Father who cared so much for you that He forever destroyed your sin on the cross and accepts you right where you are?

If Jesus is a perfect representation of the Father, and the exact representation of His being, then we are given absolutely no reason to believe that God is the moral monster that so many of us have grown up believing in! Christ paints the Father in the most beautiful of hues! According to Jesus, He is a God who is delighted at the sight of little children, goes out of His way to converse with the marginalized, turns water into wine, and brushes aside religious laws in the name of showing mercy to sinners.

Is He bringing judgment, absolutely not.

The God of the Old Testament is not only identical to the Jesus of the New Testament, but they are, according to the Bible, One and the Same. "The Word (Jesus) WAS WITH God and the Word WAS God...and the Word became flesh (Jesus) and dwelt among us." John 1:1,14 .

God is NOT a killer God, neither in the Old Testament nor in the New Testament. He does NOT kill in order to stop the killing. He does NOT break His commandments in order to uphold them. The Ten Commandments are a transcript of God's character. The Ten Commandments are essentially Jesus in written form. 

He is the "same yesterday, today and forever." (Heb. 13:8) 
Something/Someone that is predictably the same yesterday, today, and forever, always consistent, never-changing, absolutely no-respecter-of-persons - What I have just described here is an (eternally-fixed) 'spiritual' law, 

OLD TESTAMENT/Hebrew Mentality

IN OLD TESTAMENT  PASSAGES RELATING TO GOD DID IT (ACTIVE VOICE)

Mistranslation is because of verb tense:

Active Verbs have been translated in the causative sense when they should have been translated in the permissive sense. 

 AN EXAMPLE IS IN  Exodus 15:26
26 and said, “If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.”

The literal Hebrew reads: (permissive tense)
I will not permit to be put upon you none of the diseases which I have permitted to be brought on the Egyptians. I know this is a double negative, but so true.

The Hebrews had a no revelation of the enemy and his plans, so they thought everything that happened was an act of God.

God is Love!
Much of what is happening is the law of sowing and reaping in effect.

Look at these passages.

God has graciously given us a number of clues to answer this mystery, clues that we have read many times, but maybe have not completely understood. He does not explicitly explain each situation that may seem difficult to comprehend, but He has given us enough clues to allow us to understand the principles on which He acts. 

Clue No. 1: Who hardened Pharaoh's heart?
God says, "I did it."
"And the Lord said to Moses,
'When you go back to Egypt, see
that you do all those wonders
before Pharaoh which I have
put in your hand. But I will harden
his heart so that he will not let
the people go." (Ex. 4:21)

God says, "Pharaoh did it." 
"But when Pharaoh saw that there
was relief, he hardened his heart
and did not heed them, as the Lord
had said...But Pharaoh hardened
his heart at this time also; neither 
would he let the people go." 
(Ex. 8:15,32)

Clue No. 2: Who killed Saul?
God says, "I did it."
"So Saul died for his unfaithful-
'ness which he had committed
against the Lord, because he did
not keep the word of the Lord,
and also because he consulted a
medium for guidance, but he did
not inquire of the Lord; therefore,
He killed him, and turned the
kingdom over to David, the son
of Jesse." (1Chron. 10:13,14) 

God says, "Saul did it." 
"Saul said to his armorbearer,
'Draw your sword, and thrust me
through with it...But his armor-
bearer would not...Therefore,
Saul took a sword and fell on
it...So Saul died." (1 Chron. 10: 4,6)

Clue No. 3: Who killed the firstborn of Egypt?
God says, "I did it."
God said, "For I will pass through
the land of Egypt on that night
and will strike all the firstborn in
the land of Egypt, both man and
beast; against all the gods of Egypt
I will execute judgment: I am the
Lord.'" (Ex. 12:12) 

God says, "the destroyer" did it. 
"For the Lord will pass through
to strike the Egyptians; and
when He sees the blood on the
doorposts, the Lord will pass
over the door and not allow
the destroyer to come into 
your houses to strike you."
(Ex. 12,23) 

We see from these three illustrations, (and there are more), that God in one text says that HE did a certain thing, but in another text, He says SOMEONE ELSE did it. 

In order to understand the simple answer to this seemingly complex problem, let's first look at some characteristics of God that are well illustrated in the Bible. 

First: God says to us, "I'm NOT like you." "My ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts (are higher) than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8,9) So we see that God is different from human beings in the way that He acts, even in the demonstration of what we term human emotions. 

There is More:
Who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah?
There were four cities of the plain that were destroyed: Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim. See Deuteronomy 29:23-28 "The whole land is brimstone, salt, and burning; it is not sown, nor does it bear, nor does any grass grow there, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and His wrath." 
God says, "I did it."

Genesis 13:10 

"...the Lord destroyed Sodom
and Gomorrah.

God says, "They did it."
(God gave them up to their sinful ways) 

Hosea 11:8

"How can I give you up Ephraim?
"How can I hand you over Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
How can I set you like Zeboiim?
My heart churns within Me.
My sympathy is stirred." 

God is saying that He doesn't want to give up Ephraim or hand over Israel as He gave up Admah and handed over Zeboiim, the cities that were destroyed along with Sodom and Gomorrah. God is telling us that THEY DID IT TO THEMSELVES!

How could these four cities have been responsible for their own destruction? Genesis 14:10 says, "Now the Valley of Siddim (where Sodom, Gomorrah and the other two cities were) was full of asphalt pits." Today "the shores around the Dead Sea are covered with lava, sulfur, and rock salt. Gases escape from the surface of the water." (World Book Encyclopedia, 1954, Vol 4, p. 1891). 
All the elements necessary to destroy these cities by earthquake or fire were present; oil, gas, asphalt. "Brimstone" (sulfur) which rained down on these cities is a major export of this region today. 

The Dead Sea, where these cities are thought to have been located, lies on a geological fault according to the Encyclopedia Americana, p. 351, "Outpourings of lava formed volcanic plateaus at places along the sides, as well as volcanoes in and near the valley." 

So it's not difficult to suggest how the destruction of these four cities could have occurred naturally, or could have been a direct result of "corporate" greed and carelessness caused possibly by excessive mining or other technological efforts. 

Who Brought the Flood?
God says He did it
Genesis 6:17 "And, behold, I, even I, am bringing a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and everything that is in the earth shall die." 
God continued, saying that He would save Noah and his family, a group of only eight people, and some of each type of animal or fowl living on the earth. ( 2 unclean, 7 clean)

We have seen in our previous examples that when God says He did it, it actually was done by the people, themselves.

So how could the people bring the flood on themselves? 

Before the flood, people lived a very long time, the average life span was 800 or 900 years. Noah was 600 years old when the flood came (Gen 7:6). Methuselah was 969 years old when he died, and he died the year the flood came. In fact, his name, Methuselah, means "when he dies it will be sent." His name, for 969 years, prophesied of the coming flood. 

With such extended life spans, and with vastly more intelligent minds that had not been subjected to 6000 years of genetic damage from sin, those who lived before the flood would obviously be much smarter than the best minds of today. In addition, each individual had many hundreds of years of life over which to acquire knowledge 

The earth is heading for disaster, just as it is prophesied in Revelation. But WE ARE GOING TO DO IT TO OURSELVES!

Just as those brilliant, ungodly, evil, genius minds brought the flood on themselves by, most probably, the same mechanism that is occurring today: weather modification with scalar waves that reached down to great depths and disrupted the massive areas of water within the earth and reached high into the atmosphere to disrupt the water canopy that surrounded the earth. 
Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and volcano eruptions can now be brought about in any area in the world where the New World Order wishes to cause death, devastation and economic destruction. 

And everyone will blame it on God - - - An "Act of God!" 

Did God tell Abraham to kill his son?

You say, yes? (Add the fact that God didn’t actually require Abraham to go through with it.)

Does God change?
No?

Well then, since God doesn’t change — and you have already acknowledged that in times past God has sanctioned the killing of children — is it possible that God would require you to kill children?

Of course, you answer without hesitation that under no circumstance would you participate in the killing of children!

Our options are limited.
1. We can question the morality of God.
2. We can question the immutability of God.( non-changing)
3. We can question our understanding of Scripture.

If you suggest that I go with a variation of the first option by claiming that when God commands genocide it’s not immoral, that is asking me to violate my own conscience. Genocide is immoral. It violates God’s commandments. Furthermore, such a position opens the door for all manner of evil to be justified in the name of God — something the human race has a long, tragic history of doing. For me, any variation of the first option is unacceptable.
 What about the second option?— a mutating God who is in the process of learning and growing.  No, he changes not. The immutability of God is foundational to my faith. If God is subject to change, how do we know that somewhere down the line God won’t mutate into an omnipotent malevolent monster? Since I believe God is fully revealed in Christ, I reject the theologies of a monstrous deity.

Notice what really happened?

God always allows faith to be proved for it to run its full course pure and strong. God allowed the proving of Abraham’s faith by commanding him to sacrifice the thing that he loved the most in his life, his only son. Since God knows the end from the beginning, He knew what was going to happen, also this was needed as a trial run or mankind’s permission for Calvary, permission for God to send his only begotten Son to die for man’s sin.

Genesis 22:2 Then He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” 
Definitely Not!!

1 Samuel 5:3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.'"

Kill them all..................

Can you believe our Good Good Father could do this? NOT

LATER  IN MOSAIC LAW IT WAS UNLAWFUL TO SACRIFICE A CHILD
Deuteronomy 18:10 “There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer,

Only son translates yachild. Yachild describes Abraham’s unique miracle child, Isaac now in his thirties. Christ was 33 years old when he died. Zechariah describes what the Messiah will one day become to Israel’s repentant, weeping citizens, precious son, yachild.

Zechariah 12:10“And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.

Here is the place where God told Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac which is the same place where God sacrificed His own Son: the hills of Moriah, now called Mt. Zion, once Calvary outside Jerusalem. Equally noted is the phrase “His only begotten Son in The Hebrew New Testament is translated : His Son, His “Yachild.”

John 3:16“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Genesis 22:3

Gen. 22: 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he split the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.

TYPES AND SHADOWS OF Jesus Christ
1. Isaac was his father’s only son- Jesus Christ is the Father’s only begotten Son 
2. Luke 19:35 Then they brought him to Jesus. And they threw their own clothes on the donkey, and they set Jesus on him.
3. While making the journey Isaac was dead three days in the mind of his father. Jesus Christ was dead 3 days and nights before he was resurrected.
Genesis 22:4-5 Then on the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off.5 And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.”
WHAT DID ABRAHAM KNOW IN HIS HEART? He knew that even if Isaac’s life had to be taken then God would raise him from the dead so that he could come back with his father. Or he knew a sacrifice was to be furnished instead. He knew there was purpose behind this act.
Third day- day of resurrection- 3 the number of divine completeness, perfection, perfect testimony
4. Abraham saw the place (Mt. Moriah, the future place of the temple mount where sacrifices were later offered, yet he also saw a far off into the spirit and saw the death of Jesus Christ.)
Matt. 16:21 From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.
Luke 22:40-41 When He came to the place, He said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.”41 And He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and prayed,
Hebrews 11:17-19 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,18 of whom it was said, “In Isaac your seed shall be called,”19 concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense.
Abraham in offering Isaac enacted in a figurative sense, Calvary. It was not just a foreshadowing, but a trial run.
5. Isaac carried the wood on which he was to be sacrificed, Jesus carried His own cross.

Gen. 22:6 So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife, and the two of them went together.

John 19:17And He, bearing His cross, went out to a place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha,
Genesis 22:7 But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” Then he said, “Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”

GOD ANSWERED ISAAC ‘S QUESTION
John 1: 29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

John 1:34 “And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.” 35 Again, the next day, John stood with two of his disciples.

Rev. 5:12 saying with a loud voice: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain To receive power and riches and wisdom, And strength and honor and glory and blessing!”

 6. God provided a ram for a substitution sacrifice to replace Isaac. God provided Jesus Christ as the substitution sacrifice to replace all of mankind.  Abraham’s sacrifice was a ram. God’s sacrifice was Jesus Christ.
Genesis 22:8 And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” So the two of them went together.

ABRAHAM’S WORDS MUST BE MADE GOOD; ABRAHAM GAVE GOD PERMISSION TO SEND HIS SON; GOD WILL PROVIDE FOR HIMSELF A LAMB; THE ACTUAL HEBREW TRANSLATION IS : GOD WILL PROVIDE HIMSELF AS A LAMB.

ABRAHAM HAD TO SPEAK IT, DECREE IT FOR IT TO BE ESTABLISHED.

3rd Option in Interpreting OT passages:
This leaves us with only the third option. We have no choice but to revisit how we understand Scripture — particularly the Old Testament.
Let’s begin by asserting that it is Jesus Christ who is the true Word of God. Christians confess that Christ is the Logos (divine logic) made flesh. This is the theme of John’s majestic gospel as he asserts over and over again that it is Christ who finally and fully reveals to humanity what God is really like. 
So if we don’t want a god who occasionally commands genocide or a god who is mutating, how do we view the Old Testament. Something like this…

The Old Testament is the inspired telling of the story of Israel coming to know their God. But it’s a process. God doesn’t mutate, but Israel’s revelation and understanding of God obviously does. Along the way assumptions are made. One of these assumptions was that Yahweh shares certain violent attributes with the pagan deities of the ancient Near East. These assumptions were inevitable, but wrong. For example, the Hebrew prophets will eventually begin to question the assumption that Yahweh desires blood sacrifice. Jesus was fond of quoting Hosea’s bold assertion that Yahweh doesn’t want sacrifice, he wants mercy.

In the divine endorsement of genocide in the conquest of Canaan and then to the Sermon on the Mount something changes! What changes isn’t God, but the degree to which humanity has attained a revelation of the true nature of God. The Old Testament is telling the story of Israel coming to know God. It isn’t Joshua the son of Nun who gives us the full revelation of God, it’s Yeshua of Nazareth! It isn’t the warrior-poet David who gives us the full revelation of God, but the greater Son of David, Jesus Christ! We understand David as a man of his time, but we understand Christ as the exact imprint of God’s nature! (see Hebrews 1:1–3)

The whole point of this exercise has been to dampen enthusiasm for using the Old Testament to justify the use of violence. This is a dangerous practice that must be abandoned in the light of Christ. For if you want to occasionally revert to the Old Testament to justify the use of “appropriate” violence, how do you know you won’t be using the Old Testament to justify genocide? This is a legitimate question.

 This has been the world’s view for a while now. God was seen crushing the enemies of his people, burning them up in the fire of his wrath and dunging the ground with their flesh. It was the Lord’s doings and it was marvelous in their eyes. The Bible can be used to justify every kind of violence including genocide.
This is why we must interpret Scripture in the light of Christ who is the true Word of God.

The kingdom of Christ is without coercion. (And certainly without violence!) As Christians we persuade by love, witness, Spirit, reason, rhetoric, and if need be, martyrdom, but never by force. Christ followers are called to embody the peaceable kingdom of the Lamb.

In conclusion, I find the description of Abraham as a “knight of faith” who achieves a “suspension of the ethical” in the sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham didn’t “suspend the ethical” when he set off for Moriah, rather Abraham attained the ethical when he put down the knife. 

Abraham gained the revelation that, contrary to the assumption of the age, God does not want human sacrifice. If Abraham is the father of monotheism, he is also the father of the abolition of human sacrifice.

Who killed the Assyrian Army?

The Bible says "An Angel Did It!

"Then the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and eighty-five thousand and when the people arose early in the morning, behold, there they were, all dead corpses." (Isaiah 37:35) 
How in the world could 185,000 Assyrian soldiers be responsible for their own death? 

In the account of this episode given in 2 Kings 18, verse 17 says that the Assyrian army came to Jerusalem and camped by "the Upper pool, which is in the highway of the Fuller's field." 

In addition, the Bible gives evidence that when the Assyrian army surrounded a particular city before attacking it, they provided water for their troops by digging wells. God, in addressing the Assyrians, quotes them as boasting about all their conquests: "With my many chariots I have gone up the heights of the mountains, to the far recesses of Lebanon; I felled its tallest cedars...I came to its remotest height...I dug wells and drank waters." (2 Kings 19:23,24) 
The Fuller's field where the Assyrian army camped was a field for washing clothes. The Fuller was the cleaner. There was a tax on his work. In Pompeii there is a mention of a fullers' guild. 

Soap was not used in Old Testament times. The substance used for cleaning purposes was LYE (Isa 1:25, Jer 2:22), a strongly alkaline chemical that can cause severe burns if taken internally. It may have been sodium carbonate, which occurs naturally and is referred to by ancient writers as appearing in Egypt and Armenia. However, it may also have referred to potassium carbonate, a strongly alkaline solution made from wood ashes or other vegetable matter. Water was necessary, so the fuller located his plant near a water supply, "the upper pool." "Because of its unwelcome odors, the fuller's plant was usually outside the city gates." (The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, by Abingdon) 

So, how could 185,000 Assyrian soldiers ALL die in one night? Their journey to Jerusalem would have required them to have at least a limited water supply with them. But it is reasonable to assume that once they arrived at their camp at "Fuller's field" they would dig a well for a continued supply of water for the troops. 

If the well water was contaminated with the LYE that was commonly used in the field, the first day the soldiers drank the well water, it might have killed them all. 

This, of course, is only conjecture. But it IS a possibility with the information we are given, and the principles we have established regarding what God means when He says, "an Angel" did it.

Why Did God Give Israel Orders to Kill Everyone, including Babies,
When Israel Went to War?

When God brought Israel out of Egypt, they came out without weapons. God delivered them from bondage by His methods, without them having to fight anyone. They crossed the Red Sea and escaped from Pharaoh's army without any combat of their own. We have no record that the Israelites left Egypt equipped for war. "The Lord your God, who goes before you, He will fight for you, according to all He did for you in Egypt before your eyes." (Deut 1:30) 
When God finally brought Israel to the borders of the Promised Land, He proposed to drive their enemies out by sending hornets, not by warfare. (Ex 23:28) 

But somewhere along the way, Israel obtained weapons. It is surmised that they may have gathered them when they floated up on the shore after the drowning of the Egyptian army at the Red Sea. 

The question is this: If Israel chose to be a military nation in spite of God's wish to protect them in His own way, would He not then have rejected them? 
The answer is found in an example in the later history of the nation. God never intended Israel to have a king, other than Himself. But He did not reject them when they demanded one. Why did they want a king? "That we may be like all the nations" (1 Sam. 8:19). God warned them of the results of their choice, but He did not reject them for it. 

God's response to Israel was similar to His response regarding their practice of both polygamy and slavery, which were never God's ideal will. But He still did not completely reject Israel because of these practices. 

When Israel practiced these heathen customs, they distanced themselves from God and could not enjoy His fullest blessing, but God continued to protect and guide Israel as much as they would allow Him. 

Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the Israelites themselves could have chosen a military defense against God's ideal will, without His rejecting them for it. 

Let's look at a modern illustration of this type of problem. 
A certain man is against hunting for sport. All his friends hunt and they often invite him to go along. When he refuses again and again, they begin to ridicule him. The man has a son. He instructs his son in his own moral values about not killing God's creatures. But when his son reaches adulthood, he wants to go hunting with his friends. 

His father tries to persuade him not to, but the son insists. So, the father, honoring his son's choice, does not abandon his son but instead decides to meet him where he is and at least teach him to handle a gun safely, and teach him to be a good shot so the animal will not die a lingering, painful death. 

So the father takes the son to a shooting range to teach him marksmanship. The father is seen from afar by his old friends who immediately draw the wrong conclusions. They see him teaching his son to shoot so they assume that he is no longer against hunting. But his friends are wrong. The father is STILL completely against hunting for sport but he has decided to do as much as his son will allow him to do, in the face of his son's right to chose to hunt. 
God is often misunderstood and maligned for going to battle with Israel and instructing them to kill everyone, including women and children. But "going to battle" was never God's plan. This was Israel's plan and because they still worshipped God and asked Him to be with them, He did not abandon them. 

Only demons let you kill children.

However, since God's plan was to drive out ALL the heathen in a non-military way so the Israelites would not intermarry with the heathen and be led away from serving God, when Israel made their choice to fight, God said, "If that's your choice, then you better kill them ALL!" 

But this was NEVER God's plan! 

"Jesus said unto him (Peter), 'Put up again thy sword into its place: for ALL they that take the sword shall perish with the sword!" Matt 26:52.

Miriam's Leprosy
God had chosen Moses to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land. Moses, at first, protested to God that he (Moses) couldn't do the job. Of course, this was dishonoring God, because God promised to give Moses everything he needed to accomplish the task God had given Him to do. But when Moses continued to protest, saying he couldn't speak well anymore, meaning he had been gone so long from Egypt that he wasn't fluent in the Egyptian language anymore, God said he would have Moses' brother, Aaron, help him, since Aaron was still residing in Egypt. 

This, of course, resulted in more trouble for Moses than Aaron was worth. Note Aaron's behavior when Moses went up Mt. Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God. At their request, Aaron helped the Israelites into idolatry by making them a Golden Calf to worship. 

Later, both Miriam (Moses' sister) and Aaron criticized Moses' wife and complained that Moses wasn't sharing enough of the leadership with them. They said, "Has the Lord indeed spoken ONLY by Moses? Has not He spoken also by us?" Numbers 12:1-16. 

"And the Lord heard it. . . and the anger of the Lord was kindled against them; and He departed." Here again, is God's wrath. He gives us up to our own evil ways. 
"And the cloud departed from off the tabernacle; and behold, Miriam became leprous, white as snow." 

Miriam was a complainer, a murmurer, and the Bible is very clear about who attacks murmurers. 1 Cor. 10:7:10 says, "Do not become idolaters as were some of them. . . . Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell (Numbers 25:1-9); nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents (Numbers 2:6-9); nor murmur, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed by the destroyer."

We know that the "complainers" include the quail eaters (Ex. 16, Num 11), the Kadesh-Barnea rebels (Num 13,14; Deut 1:19-46); and Korah, Dathan and Abiram (Num 16,17). 

So the Destroyer gave Miriam her leprosy. How did this happen? satan didn't just come up to Miriam and curse her. We've already learned the method by which both God and satan accomplish their goals - - they work through people. 
Here is a reasonable explanation for 1) Miriam's leprosy, 2) Uzza's death after touching the Ark (1 Chronicles 13:9), 3) Ananias and his wife, Sapphira's, sudden death after lying and withholding money they had pledged to God. (Acts 5:1-11) 

In Australia, the native Australians, called the Aborigines, have a ritual that is carried out against any male member of a tribe who breaks a tribal taboo. The witch doctor is called, who opens his bag of implements, brings out a chicken bone and places a Death curse on the offending member of the tribe by pointing the chicken bone at him. This is called "Pointing the Bone." The "cursed" man ALWAYS dies, either immediately, or within several days. He dies because - - - he BELIEVES he will die! 

Lest you think this is far-fetched, I have seen many similar happenings in orthodox medicine. A doctor will tell a cancer patient, or some other seriously ill patient, how long he or she has to live. Often the patient will die right on time. Is it because the doctor is so brilliant and can predict exactly how long the patient will live? No, it is because the patient BELIEVES that the doctor is correct, that the doctor KNOWS - - and therefore the patient accepts the pronouncement and dies at the time predicted. The Doctor has "Pointed the Bone." 

When patients REFUSE to accept the death sentence, it is amazing how LONG many will live PAST the predicted time. There are even those who REFUSE to die, and actually GET WELL! 

The "Bone had been Pointed" at Miriam. She realized that she was fighting against God. Her immune system was thrown into a state of shock and she at once became ill with the most dreaded disease, leprosy. Uzza, when he touched the Ark, immediately realized that he had done what God had said should NEVER be done. Ananias and Sapphira suddenly understood that they had lied to God and everyone in their church family, and now their sin had been made public. Their humiliation was overwhelming. 

Medical studies show that 50% of all heart attacks occur during, or immediately after, an episode of either intense anger or similar severe stress. 
God says, "But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would have none of me, so I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust; and they walked in their own counsels.

"Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways! I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries." Psalm 81:11-14 

Elijah and the Fire consuming those who would arrest him and the story of Korah, Dathan and Abiram

The specifics of these two stories have not been fully explained in the Bible, however we now have a very clear idea of how the Lord works. God is NOT a killer God. The Ten Commandments are a transcript of God's character, therefore He CANNOT break His own commandments. He CANNOT tell us to keep the commandments while He freely breaks them. 

The king sent a captain with his fifty men to arrest Elijah after the king heard that Elijah had said that the king would die of his illness. The captain "went up to him (Elijah) and, behold he sat on the top of a hill. And he spoke unto him, 'Thou man of God, the king hath said, Come down.' And Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty. 'If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty.' And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty." 2 Kings 1:9-12 

Many see this occurrence as an endorsement of the passage in Revelation 20:7-9 which speaks about the fate of the wicked, "And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth. . . . and they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them." 

But to understand God's character, we must ALWAYS return to the life of Jesus, who came to reveal the EXACT and COMPLETE character of the Father.

Another example:
Want to know what God really look like? Look at Jesus
(Heb.1:3; Col.1;15; John 5:30 & 12:49)
(Heb 1:2-3)  has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds, who being the shining splendor of His glory, and the express image of His essence, and upholding all things by the word of His power, through Himself cleansing of our sins, He sat down on the right of the Majesty on high.....

(Col 1:13-15)  For He has delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son; in whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins who is the image of the invisible God, the First-born of all creation.

(John 5:30)  I can do nothing of My own self. As I hear, I judge, and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of the Father who has sent Me.

(John 12:49)  For I have not spoken of Myself, but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say, and what I should speak.
I don't care how spiritual David felt when He said God is delighted to smash infants against rocks. 

New Living Translation
Happy is the one who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks!

If I don't see it in the life of Jesus then I'm only going to come to the conclusion that David had the wrong idea about God when He wrote that.

VIEWS of God should look like Jesus
And the Father who sent Me has himself testified on My behalf. You have never heard His voice or seen His form,” John 5:37 (emphasis mine)“Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father.” John 6:46 (emphasis mine) I think each and every account recorded is true. Those people saw God. But I think John and Jesus are pointing out something important. While those people saw God, they did not see Him clearly. They did not see Him as He was. Without Jesus as a lens through which to see the Father we have all perverted the image of God. We read our fears and failings into God. We assume the worst rather than seeing Him for who He is.

People’s number one response to seeing God in the Old Covenant was fear. They grew fearful and aware of their sin.  Also, they had no revelation of the devil. Jesus came to show us the Father wants to provoke love in us, not fear. He wanted to point out our value to Him not our failings. So what is John saying? If we build our knowledge of God on the way He was perceived by those in the Old Covenant we will surely fail to recognize Him. This of course is what the Pharisees did. They stood right in front of Jesus and failed to see He was God! He wasn’t what they expected to see! But John highlights what Paul does in His letter to the Colossians – that “Jesus is the image of the invisible God”. We don’t know what God is like, and we will always mess up figuring out that. The only way to truly see Him as He is, is to look upon Jesus. As Jesus said – “if you’ve seen Me you’ve seen the Father.” I think John is challenging our preconceived images of God. 

We tend to make Him in our image. Let’s not fall into that trap. Let’s instead trust this: God looks like Jesus. He always has and always will. Any view we have of God doesn't look like Jesus is a view that we need to change.
In Luke 9:51-56, Jesus is journeying to Jerusalem with His disciples. He is passing through Samaria and the people "did not receive Him. . . . and when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, 'Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elijah did?' But He turned, and REBUKED them, and said, 'Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is NOT come to destroy men's lives, but to SAVE them." 

Clearly, Jesus was horrified at the wicked attitude of His disciples. He rebuked them severely. Since Jesus is the SAME yesterday, today and forever, it is IMPOSSIBLE that He would do at the end what He refused, in horror, to do in Samaria. There MUST be another explanation. 

What About the Seven Last Plagues?

How Could We Possibly Bring Those on Ourselves?

Revelation 16:1-21
1st Plague: Foul and loathsome sores fell ONLY on those who had the mark of the beast and worshipped his image. 

This disease could be caused by the very same food that those who REFUSE to take the Mark of the Beast are NOT allowed to buy and eat! That's why it will ONLY affect those who HAVE the Mark! The food supply today, especially flesh food, is SO diseased with Mad Cow Disease, Foot and Mouth Disease, E. Coli, Salmonella and other contaminants that it's not hard to understand how man could be responsible for this plague. 

2nd Plague: The sea became the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea. 

The difference between the blood of a dead man and the blood of a live man is - Oxygen. The seas are already terribly polluted and the fish and other sea creatures are dying by the millions because of lack of oxygen in the water.. 
3rd Plague: The rivers and fountains of waters became blood. 

It may be that this is referring to the pollution in the rivers and streams that are even now causing the waters in certain areas to turn red. 

4th Plague: The sun had the power to scorch men with fire. 
Skin cancer is already becoming epidemic, NOT primarily because of the sun, but because of the rich Western diet, too much animal fat, sugar and processed food. 

Baylor University performed an experiment which involved two groups of animals: one group was given the standard American diet, as noted above. The other group was given a highly nutritious diet. Then both groups of animals were exposed to ultraviolet light rays, simulating the sun. In the group eating the standard American diet, 25% developed skin cancer. In the group eating the highly nutritious diet, NOT ONE animal developed skin cancer. 

So it's the rich American diet that is responsible for skin cancer. (Note: For thousands of years, our ancestors lived outdoors and worked outdoors. Skin cancer was virtually unheard of until the last 50 or 60 years. 

5th Plague: The throne and the kingdom of the beast was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain. This may be physical darkness and/or severe spiritual darkness. Nuclear bomb blasts or volcano eruptions from Scalar wave weather modification meddling, could both cause physical darkness.

6th Plague: The great river Euphrates dried up to make way for the kings of the east. Three unclean spirits like frogs came out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet, for they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. (This plague requires a long spiritual explanation.)

7th Plague: Noises and thunders, and lightnings: and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: . . . .and every island fled away, and the mountains were not found And there fell upon men great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent." The great earthquake and massive storm could easily occur as a result of weather control - - - out of control!

God's "Wrath"

The first problem we must address is that the translators have taken great license with the translation of various words in the Bible. "Wrath" and "anger" are no exceptions. 

In the New Testament, two Greek words are both translated "wrath." They are orge (#3709 in Strong's Concordance) which means desire, or violent passion and thumos (#2372) which means passion, breathing hard, or fury. 
The translations in the Old Testament are much more varied. Each number on the right in the list below is for a different Hebrew word. But they ALL are translated "wrath." The Hebrew language is very precise. Each word has a specifically different meaning. This shows that the translators arbitrarily chose to translate all of these different words as "wrath." But they do NOT all mean wrath .

The Hebrew word aph (#639) means rapid breathing in passion. 
Chemah (#2534) is defined as hot with passion
Ebrah (#5678) means outburst of passion
Qetseph (#7110) means, literally, a splinter or "chipped off". Freely translated it means to be displeased, to fret or possibly to burst out. 
Kaac (#3707) - to be grieved or sorrowful, to be troubled.

All these words have specific meanings which denote a passionate displeasure or a sorrowful troubled spirit, yet they are ALL translated "wrath." This, of course, makes God appear violent, frightening and vengeful, apparently the way the translators chose to present God to the world, a "ferocious" God that agrees with their own theology. A more accurate translation is that God is passionately sorrowful or troubled.

I do believe in a literal 2nd Coming of Christ, but let’s don’t scare people with this. Fear never caused anyone to acknowledge Him.

God, Himself, Defines His "Wrath."
Human beings define wrath as "intense anger, rage fury, vengeance" according to Webster's New World Dictionary. But God defines His wrath in a totally different way.

Look at Romans 1:18: "For the wrath (Greek word orge) of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold (suppress) the truth in unrighteousness." Then verses 24, 26 and 28 tell us how God demonstrates His wrath: 

Verse 24: "Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves." 
Verse 26: "For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections; for even their women did change (exchange) the natural use into (for) that which is against nature." 

Verse 28: "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate (debased) mind, to do those things which are not convenient (fitting)." 

So we see that God's wrath is just giving us up to our own sinful ways to reap what we have sown. He doesn't punish us. He doesn't harm us in any way. He just let's us go the way we have chosen. We then punish ourselves by our wrong decisions. 

God has given us  His Word as a guide for our life. He says that if we obey the Word, our lives will be easier and happier. If we don't obey them, our lives will be harder and more sorrowful - - - NOT because He's going to punish us, but because the natural result of our actions and behavior will bring us sorrow and pain. 

When our children were young, we warned them not to play in the street. We didn't say, "If you play in the street, I'll kill you." No, we said "I love you and I don't want to see you hurt. If you play in the street, you might be injured or killed." 

It's the same with God. He says, "I love you and I want your life to be happy and healthy. If you don't obey the guidelines I have given you, I won't punish you, but you will punish yourselves by bringing on yourselves the results of your behavior. You will reap what you have sown." 

So we can understand that God's wrath is totally different from man's wrath. 
Here are the misconceptions:

“”Therefore thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle.
—2 Kings 21:12

SMITE! SMITE! SMITE! SMITE! SMITE! SMITE! SMITE!
God is recorded in the Bible as having personally killed fast-tracked to the afterlife a large number of people. While the majority of the divine assassinations certainly took place during God's time as the notoriously vengeful deity in the Old Testament a few instances are also recorded in the slightly more peaceful New.

This page lists people personally assassinated by His hand or by His non-human agents; it is not entirely complete, however. It also does not include the vastly greater number of people which the Bible maintains were killed at His instruction, or in His name throughout recorded history.


Old Testament Killings by God
Fatalities
Crime
Method used
Biblical reference
20 million (estimated).
People being evil.
Drowning (yes, even the Plesiosaurs and innocent babies).

Genesis 6:8
The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (population of Sodom estimated to be 600-1200, Gomorrah presumably would be similar).

According to Genesis: Being evil and wanting to rape two angels (who visited Sodom in the form of men).

According to Ezekiel (depending on translation): Being prideful (arrogant), overfed and unconcerned (having an abundance of idleness); neglecting the poor and needy; being haughty and committing abominations before God. Basically, having fun.

The passage contains a direct implication on homosexuality by wording, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them". The word 'men' was explicitly mentioned 3 times in reference to the angels over the entire passage.

Burnt to death by fire and a rain of burning sulfur.
Genesis 19:4-5 
Ezekiel 16:46-47 (specifically Ezekiel 16:49-50)
Lot’s wife.
Pausing to look back at the spectacle of God destroying entire cities, including her own residence and all her possessions, in a massive conflagration of fire and brimstone.
Transformed in to a pillar of salt.
Genesis 19:26

Er, the firstborn of Judah.
Being "wicked in the sight of the Lord"

Genesis 38:7
Onan (Er’s brother and apparent inventor ofonanism)
Disobeying God's orders to impregnate his dead brother's wife 
(or “spilling his seed”).
Genesis 38:9-10 (unlucky family)
The firstborn of Egypt.
Being firstborn when God decided to show his strength. God hardened Pharaoh's heart;  he refused to let the Israelites go. Psychotic and incompetent. 


The Angel of Death.
Exodus 12:29 (Rather tough on the kids who really had nothing to do with it.)
The Egyptian army.
Refusing to disobey orders to pursue the Israelites fleeing through the Red Sea, which was parted with walls of water on both sides of the path.
Drowned when the seawater returned.
Exodus 14:28
Nadab and Abihu, sons of Aaron.
Offering strange fire before the Lord.
Burnt to death
Leviticus 10:1-3 (God, being a perfectionist, does not tolerate mistakes during rituals.)
Undisclosed number of Israelites.
Having low moral

Fire
Numbers 11:1-3 (Counselling evidently was not an option)
Undisclosed number of Israelites.
Eating quails
Plague
Numbers 11:31-35
Ten scouts sent to explore the promised land
Spreading bad reports about this land containing giants, and being too difficult to conquer.
Plague
Numbers 14:36-38
Korah, Dathan, Abiram and their respective families.
Claiming to be as holy as Moses and Aaron.
The earth opened up and swallowed them - burying them alive.
Numbers 16:27-32, which implies the children were killed, but Numbers 26:11 states Korah's children survived.
250 Israelites.
Followers of Korah (see above)
Burnt to death by fire from God.
Numbers 16:35
14,700 Israelites.

Complaining about the previous two loving assassinations concerning Korah.
Plague
Numbers 16:49 
Undisclosed number of Israelites.
Despairing, and complaining about the quality of bread.
Being bitten to death by divinely summoned fieryserpents, although casting an idol of a snake and looking upon it would prevent them from dying.
Numbers 21:4-9 (Honestly, wouldn't it be cool just to try this to see it happen? C'mon, I dare ya...)
24,000 Israelites
Sexual immorality with Moabite women and worshiping Baal.
Plague.
Numbers 25:9 (Proving once more that despite God being obviously real and very jealous, Israelites would worship a sandwich if Moses so much as popped out to buy a newspaper.)
Undisclosed number of Ammorites
Waging war against Israel, trying to protect themselves and their families from 
the holy slaughter that the Israelites regularly inflicted on their enemies
Sending hailstones from Heaven
Joshua 10:10-11
Either 70 or 50,070 Israelites (dependent on how the inerrant Bible is translated).
Looking into the Ark of the Covenant 

Not specified
1 Samuel 6:19 (You would have thought the 50,070th Israelite would have more sense than to climb a mountain of 50,069 bodies and look into a box)
Nabal.
David refrained from murdering Nabal's servants or stealing from him. He 
expected his kindness to be repaid in the form of gifts from Nabal, but Nabal 
declined. God killed Nabal before David had the chance to go "avenging thyself 
with thine own hand."

1 Samuel 25:38 (This was quite convenient as David, an avid collector of wives, got to marry Nabal's wife who was quite hot.)
Uzzah.
Touching the Ark while trying to prevent it from tipping over.
2 Samuel 6:6-7 (No good deed goes unpunished.)
David and Bathsheba's baby boy.
None. The baby was killed in order to punish David.
2 Samuel 12:14-18 (The life of a baby is sacred, as explained by Christians, but it's worth squat when God is angry with the parents.)

70,000 assorted Israelites
Inspired by either God, or perhaps Satan - the Bible is a tad unclear - David took 
a census of his lands and people.
Plague
2 Samuel 24:13 , despite being told to by God in 2 Samuel 24:1. (Unless you read 1 Chronicles 21:1, where the devil did it)
An unnamed prophet
The prophet had been told by God to not eat bread, but another guy claimed he
 too was a prophet, and that God had commanded him to bring the prophet 
home for some food.
Eaten by lions
1 Kings 13:1-24 (That’s what happens when you follow the advice of self-proclaimed prophets.)

Jeroboam's son.
Child killed to punish Jeroboam, to save him from a massacre God was 
planning for the rest of Jeroboam's family, and possibly also as a sign used to 
confirm a prophecy.
Died in his mother's arms.
1 Kings 14:10-18 (God euthanizes a child to save him from the terrors of...His own wrath?)

An unnamed man
Refusal to strike a prophet when ordered to do so by the prophet in question.
Killed by a lion (God really enjoys using Lions inKings).
1 Kings 20:35-36 (Weird or what?)
King Ahaziah
Seeking medical advice from a rival god, and Baal worship.
Died in bed while recovering from an earlier fall.
1 Kings 22:51 and 2 Kings 1:16 (Baal must have been pretty good to compete with a Yahweh: the God who would incinerate your children on a whim.)
102 soldiers
Being impolite to Elijah and serving King Ahziah.
Burnt to death.
2 Kings 1:9-12 (This verse is worth reading, since it's almost comical the way in which the soldiers queue up to be incinerated.)
42 youths.
They mocked Elisha's bald head.
No kidding - God sends 2 she-bears to maul them to death.
2 Kings 2:23-24 (Evidently there weren't any lions to hand).[1]
Some foreigners.
Not worshiping God
Killed by lions
2 Kings 17:25-26 ("Death by lion" crops up with suspicious frequency. Did the author of Kings have some kind of lion-phobia?)
185,000 soldiers.
Being at war with Israel
Killed by the angel of the Lord while they slept.
2 Kings 19:35
Jeroboam.
Rebelling against Abijah, the king of Israel based on dependence from David.
Not specified
2 Chronicles 13:20
Jehoram.
Doing evil in the sight of the Lord.
Stricken by a disease that caused his bowels to fall out.
2 Chronicles 21:14-19 

How could this deception be perpetuated? God is not a killer! How can He break His commandment; “ Thou shalt not kill.” But according to interpretations of the Bible He killed over 2,000,000 people. What is wrong here?

OUR VIEW OF GOD
Where would we be without our war-causing, city-burning, nation-smiting, world-flooding, fire-falling, plague-dropping, child-killing, soul-damning view of God? 

Well, we'd be a lot better off. 

Actually, we'd be a lot closer to beholding the real Jesus, to sitting in the lap of the real Father, and being supernaturally led by the real Holy Spirit.

We all need to judge satan out of our lives by first removing him and all his dark works from our image of God. satan is the one who does all the war-causing, city-burning, nation-smiting, world-flooding, fire-falling, plague-dropping, child-killing, and soul-damning, NOT God.

John 10:10 is the dividing line: (Joh 10:10)  The thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come so that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Of course, satan cannot do this unless you allow.

God is a hero, not a villain.

This simple belief and saying has kept me focused for many years. God loves you. If you believe this, than the other view of God is wrong and a lie. Period. You can't have both.

When it comes to God's involvement in the world, He has a policy of non-intervention. He gave us freedom, and wants freedom to remain free.

It’s a lie to say all the floods fires etc. are from God...for God does have a vengeance and a wrath in progress as we speak....
Perversion of nature, the fall, is the reason for devasting tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, blizzards etc.

An interesting thought on the subject ... you know all the people in the OT that God supposedly killed or had killed? Jesus preached the gospel to them. 
"Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked..." Acts 17:30

And the worse punishment under the Law was physical death.
Hard for us to judge God, there is always some goodness and justice behind His works, even when His works appear evil to our fallen understanding of Him. 

And many in the church are joyously looking forward to those wicked sinners finally getting what they deserve. Go learn why the Lord rebuked Jonah when he sat and sulked under the tree.

 If I may speak plainly: It is NOT a lie to say that the destruction comes from him whom the Son of God Himself says is here to "steal, kill & destroy." It is a lie to blame those deaths on the one who came "to bring life." 

If Jesus paid the price for our sins (see 1 John 2:2 for one example), then why would there still be judgment for sins? If Jesus died for sinners who were still sinners (Romans 5:8), then why would he turn around and smite them? If 

Jesus is the "exact representation" of God (Hebrews 1:3), and Jesus never caused a single flood or fire, never made a single person sick, never killed anyone, never even spoke harshly to anyone except the self-righteous, then why, in Heaven's name, would we blame all this on God? 

There WILL be final judgment, but not until Revelation 20, in the meantime, we're in a season of reconciliation (1 Cor 5:18-19), where God is literally "imploring" the world to be reconciled to him. 

When we accuse God of stealing, killing and destroying, we're doing "the accuser's" work: we're promoting the devil's message and agenda. 

Just for reference, what is your opinion on the validity of the OT? I totally agree that we do not see Jesus representing the same things in the NT. We are told to imitate him, but were never told to imitate the wrath and judgment seen in the OT. So either way it is a moot point when it comes to actions. 

But our ability to imitate Jesus and be about his business will never get very far if we think that his business is getting in the way of the Father's business. Jesus was not running a covert operation to sabotage his Father's business.

 If Jesus is the "exact representation" of God (Hebrews 1:3), then we MUST interpret the "God of the OT" - and, in fact, ALL of the OT - through the revelation that is Jesus. If we interpret without that lens, we will see wrong.
The Son of man was kind enough to leave behind a wide variety of activities that can be used to describe the character of God. 

We can portray the Lord virtually any way we want, depending on the verses we use and the ones we ignore. 

But we can’t ignore this verse:
(Jas 1:17)  Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness nor shadow (darkness) of turning.

Jesus came to reveal the Father God, Yahweh to us. He never changes. Our perception of him has.We need to stop that.

The portraits we paint of God reflect our own hearts, which are always looking to the scriptures. 

 It's amazing how one glimpse of God in a different light can change everything you ever believed... It doesn't change truth, only our perception of it.

Think about it, in the OT his judgment was for mercy. All of his judgments are made with love and mercy at their core, and much was for the sake of justice for the innocent and giving them relief from oppressors. He would not be good if He did not bring temporal deliverance with temporal solutions in the OT for people. 

There had not been the revelation of Christ to us that He might be made manifest through us. The kingdom had not come within because Holy Spirit had not been poured out on all flesh yet. Temporal problems were dealt with temporal solutions.

Now we have the solution in us... The kingdom within, righteousness joy and peace IN the Holy Spirit. We are now the solution, not just slap them upside the head  with judgment...

But even those of whom scripture shows received temporal judgment of the flesh were given a chance when Jesus preached to those who had died up until the cross.

You’ve heard the expression when someone passes away, “God just took him/her home.”   Is this really true? 

We have for far too long given ourselves over in religious circles to thought-processes that make no sense in order to explain tragedies that elude easy explanation. Worse still, we attribute those tragedies to the God of Light and Love as though somehow God is perpetrating these literal crimes against humanity. Instead of acknowledging what the Bible clearly states in John 10:10–namely that there is a thief loose in the world who kills and destroys, and who is nothing at all like God, we make up these pious-sounding arguments that (stunningly) people somehow actually believe.

I think it would be far more authentic if we started questioning random acts of darkness instead of simply attributing them to God for lack of better understanding. 

I will be the first to tell you that there are lots of passages in scripture that I don’t understand and have no explanation for. I cannot explain all of the verses that say that God killed hundreds of thousands of people, because God didn’t do that since it’s not in His nature. I can’t explain a good number of Old Testament verses for that reason, but I CAN understand with impunity that Jesus and God are the same, and that Jesus revealed himself to be the one who GIVES life, not the one who takes it away. We have for too long relied on Job’s limited and inaccurate view of God as one who gives AND takes away instead of relying on the perfect revelation of God found in Jesus Christ. 

And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. Job 1:21 The Lord gives and the Lord takes away?

But the question stands: Does God really give and then take away?
(See separate document on Job’s speech) ( will publish that next time)

Any picture we have of God needs to be informed by Jesus Christ. Jesus is the “radiance of God’s glory, the exact representation of his being” (Heb 1:3). To get a good understanding of God’s character, we need to look to Jesus, not Job. Can you imagine Jesus stealing or killing? Of course not. So how is it that some people think that God was responsible for Job’s loss?

Now you might say to me, “but Paul, it’s in the Bible, it’s right there in black and white – ‘the LORD gave and the LORD has taken away’.” Let me put it to you like this. If you want the very best insight into God’s character, are you better off looking at:

(a)    Jesus, who said “anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9), or
(b)    Job, who had only heard of God but did not actually know him  (see Job 42:5)?

It seems obvious to me that Jesus is the better choice. Form your views of God by looking at the things Jesus said and did.

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (Jas 1:17)

Who are you allowing to robbing you? And did he really rob you?

But what if you have suffered loss, like Job? He lost his health, his wealth, and his family. The temptation may be to blame God for your loss, as if God had a change of heart. But God is not fickle. He does not change like shifting shadows. He is an extraordinary giver who never takes back his gifts.

“God’s gifts and God’s call are under full warranty – never canceled, never rescinded.” (Rms 11:29, MSG)

So if God is doing the giving, who is doing the taking or who are you allowing to do the taking? Again, Jesus provides the answer:

The Dividing Line is:
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (Joh 10:10)

We ought not to be confused about these two different roles. One is a giver, the other is a taker. If you have been given something good, then give thanks to God. But if you’ve been robbed, don’t blame God. He’s not behind your loss.

It’s time we moved on from the spoiled rancid last-year’s milk of the old way of God-kills thinking and try chewing on the meat of the God who raises the dead, heals the sick, and give hope where there was previously no hope. Instead of living a powerless gospel that saves no one at all but relies on death to get them to heaven, I’m believing in the Jesus who promised abundant life, and who said “whoever lives and believes in me WILL NEVER DIE.” You get the same choice–choose wisely.

(Heb 13:8)  Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever.

Something that is predictably the same yesterday, today, and forever, always consistent, never-changing, absolutely no-respecter-of-persons - What I have just described here  is an (eternally-fixed) 'spiritual' law.

God is Good. God is Good; He is infinitely good, all the time.

God is a word that comes from the German word for “good.” The term that describes the actual name of the creator is ineffable because it encompasses far too much for the limited human mind to comprehend.

Ps.73:11 Truly God is good to Israel, To such as are pure in heart.
Psalm 100:5 For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, And His truth endures to all generations.
Psalm 34:8 Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!
Nahum 1:7 The Lord is good, A stronghold in the day of trouble; And He knows those who trust in Him.
James 1:13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.
Psalm 145:7 They shall utter the memory of Your great goodness, And shall sing of Your righteousness.
Psalm 119:68 You are good, and do good; Teach me Your statutes.
Psalm 92:15 To declare that the Lord is upright; He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.
Psalm 16:1-2 Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust.2 O my soul, you have said to the Lord, “You are my Lord, My goodness is nothing apart from You.”
2 Peter 1:3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,
Psalm 107:8-9 Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness, And for His wonderful works to the children of men!9 For He satisfies the longing soul, And fills the hungry soul with goodness.
James 1:16- 17  Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. 17Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
Jeremiah 32:41 ‘Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land, with all My heart and with all My soul.’
Zechariah 7:9 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: 1 ‘Execute true justice, Show mercy and compassion Everyone to his brother.
Matthew 19:117 So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.”

The Goodness of God

In the original Hebrew language of Old Testament Scripture, the word used for the goodness of God, is the same word used for the glory of God. It is "Kabod," which means "weighty, splendor and majesty ( everything He is)." God spoke to Moses and said, "...I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live." (Exodus 33:19-20)

I would like to illustrate a picture of the nature of God, the goodness of God. In Mark 4, we have the story of the wind and waves obeying Jesus.
And when He had come out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no one could bind him, not even with chains, because he had often been bound with shackles and chains. And the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces; neither could anyone tame him. (Mark 5:2-4)

Jesus then proceeds to cast out a legion of demons from the man, and the man is totally set free! Immediately they get back into the boat and leave. It seems that the whole purpose for the trip and even crossing through and calming the storm, was for one man to be set free! This is our God. This is the nature of God that we must receive as revelation. I have read this story and thought, "If Jesus would cross the sea for that one demon-possessed man, He would certainly do it for me!"

The Bible says that God is love. We can see what He is in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8,"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails...."

Hallelujah! God is not counting our sins against us, nor imputing them. The sin problem has been taken care of! He is slow to anger, He is love, and He is our Father! This is the revelation that will bring the revolution.

The Glory of God equals the Goodness of God.

In conclusion:

Moses was left out of the promised  land because he portrayed God as angry when God wasn't angry. Describing God, or portraying God, as angry: that's enough to keep God's leaders out of the promised land. 

There are some people who are portraying God as an angry old guy ready to smite people. Moses' experience teaches me to maybe have some pity for them: they may have already disqualified themselves for God's promises and plans for themselves. That's so sad. And really, that's so deceived. 

God is both good and just. Abraham stated clearly that God will not sweep away the righteous with the wicked (see Gen 18:25). 

(Gen 18:25)  Far be it from You to act in this manner, to kill the righteous with the wicked. And far be it from You, that the righteous should be as the wicked. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?

I want to be careful not to misrepresent The Goodness of God, for several reasons, including my own participation in the promises. But I also want to guard against becoming like those sad people who are following Moses' error! Honestly, I don't ever want to be like that.

The Lord is calling all Christians everywhere to gather together in prayer. Start prayer chains for 24 hour intercession or set weekly or daily prayer meetings. For the war against us is very serious. The aircraft used on Sept 11th were only one means of terrorism available. Experts say that it is possible that there are nuclear "suitcase" bombs that are already in the country that could be detonated from the trunk of a car, killing hundreds of thousands. We must be guarded against biological and chemical warfare as well.  Then there is the recent threat of multiple beheadings by ISIS. Yet, there is no way any government could guard against such attacks with 100% protection, but God can!

We, therefore, must pray! It is time to declare the destiny of God for the nations. Stand in prayer for America, for Israel and for the Islamic peoples everywhere. Our stand is not against flesh and blood, but against the spirits ruling and oppressing millions. Also, let’s remember to exercise our authority over perversions of nature and calamities.

Quote from  me:

I don't get those, "It's the end of the world!" feelings anymore when I see disaster and war. Romans 8:19 says the world doesn't have to be this way, it's supposed to be restored to perfection. When 10,000 people die, I don't see a prophecy being fulfilled, I see a thieving devil stealing life and a confused church thinking it was God's idea. We are here to be life to the world, not get excited because it's dying.

We have received and abundance of grace:

What about weather patterns? Aren’t they acts of God?

Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and volcano eruptions can now be brought about in any area in the world because of the fall (creation groaning). It wishes to cause death, devastation and economic destruction. And everyone will blame it on God - - - An "Act of God!"  Your insurance company will say it.

Act of God

An event that directly and exclusively results from the occurrence of natural causes that could not have been prevented by the exercise of foresight or caution; an inevitable accident. Courts have recognized various events as acts of God—tornadoes, earthquakes, death, extraordinarily high tides, violent winds, and floods. Many insurance policies for property damage exclude from their protection damage caused by acts of God.

Yet, Scripture says the earth groans. It’s out of order and wants to be brought back in order.

Weather patterns are not the judgment of God. God’s people are not rising up in their dominion authority. We are reaping weather patterns because we are not taking authority. Creation is waiting, expecting manifested sons to appear.

(Rom 8:19-21)  For the earnest expectation of the creation waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creation was not willingly subjected to vanity, but because of Him who subjected it on hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Romans 8:19-21J.B. Phillips New Testament (PHILLIPS)
18-21 In my opinion whatever we may have to go through now is less than nothing compared with the magnificent future God has planned for us. The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own. The world of creation cannot as yet see reality, not because it chooses to be blind, but because in God’s purpose it has been so limited—yet it has been given hope. And the hope is that in the end the whole of created life will be rescued from the tyranny of change and decay, and have its share in that magnificent liberty which can only belong to the children of God!

What about Job? He had some terrible things to say about God. But, remember, he repented.

Job 42:3 You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.

GOD IS GOOD
We say it: “God is good all the time; all the time God is good”; let’s mean it.
There is much error in a view of God as a killer How did this happen?

Truth God is Love,Love,Love. 

The blessing of the Lord makes one rich and adds no sorrow Prov. 10:22.

I love the Phillips Translation of 1 Cor. 13: It reads as follows:
1 Corinthians 13

13 1-3 If I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal. If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that absolute faith which can move mountains, but have no love, I amount to nothing at all. If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing.
4 This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience—it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.
5-6 Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.
7-8a Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.
All gifts except love will be superseded one day
8b-10 For if there are prophecies they will be fulfilled and done with, if there are “tongues” the need for them will disappear, if there is knowledge it will be swallowed up in truth. For our knowledge is always incomplete and our prophecy is always incomplete, and when the complete comes, that is the end of the incomplete.
11 When I was a little child I talked and felt and thought like a little child. Now that I am a man my childish speech and feeling and thought have no further significance for me.
12 At present we are men looking at puzzling reflections in a mirror. The time will come when we shall see reality whole and face to face! At present all I know is a little fraction of the truth, but the time will come when I shall know it as fully as God now knows me!
13 In this life we have three great lasting qualities—faith, hope and love. But the greatest of them is love. J.B. Phillips New Testament (PHILLIPS)

THIS IS OUR GOD, UNCONDITIONAL LOVE!!

(John 17:22-23)  And I have given them the glory which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one,  I in them, and You in Me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that You have sent Me and have loved them as You have loved Me.
I leave you with this:

(Jas 1:17)  Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning. (shadow, or dark thing)

The word anothen (Strong’s #509), and means, “from above; by analogy, from the first; by implication, anew; from a higher place; used of things which come from heaven or God.” It is derived from ano (upward or on the top, on high). Ano is translated as the “high” calling (Phil. 3:14).

James is saying here that every gift that we have that's either "good" or "perfect" is attributable to God and comes from the High calling. (Php 3:14)  I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Do we have a distorted image of God? Change that if you do. God is good. receive that revelation!!