I have been the recipient of criticism because I portray an angry, vengeful God in my novel. Many people don’t like to think about this side of God, but it’s part of who He is. Most folks love the description of Him that we read in Exodus 34:6,”Then the Lord passed by in front of him (Moses) and proclaimed,’The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth.’ The same folks don’t like the rest of the narrative in the next verse:’who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet (here it comes) He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.’ (NASB). Oh, no, what a BUMMER. The usual response I hear to this is,”That’s the Old Testament God.” I guess they haven’t read that our Lord is “the same yesterday and today, yes and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8). I guess also that these folks have not read Revelation, which, if I remember correctly, is in the New Testament. We have to face it–God is a double-edged sword. One edge brings us His love, grace, forgiveness and blessings, but the other cuts with wrath, condemnation and punishment. To deny either side is to deny the totality of who God is. Not a smart plan. Let me give one example today, then more later. In Genesis we see that God was so disgusted with humans that He was sorry He had created them. He then sent the Great Flood which killed every person, born or unborn, on this planet except for Noah and his party of eight. It is estimated that there were between one and ten billion humans alive at that time. This means that God killed with water men, women, children, babies in and out of the uterus. Sounds savage, but it happened. Rebellion against God is not a good move. More soon.
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