The Wrath of God
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Punishing the Children Many people misunderstand the wrath of God. The purpose of this series is to gain wisdom from the Bible stories about wrath, war and judgment that cause most of us to squirm uncomfortably. Our purpose here is to clearly show that God is indeed worthy of your deepest and most passionate love. |
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It can be rather troubling to first read this verse, because it portrays God as a powerful being who seems to capriciously punish children, just for the heck of it. However, a closer look reveals something entirely different. When I first became a Christian, my teachers left me with the strong impression that God was "50/50," meaning He was "50 parts Wrath to 50 parts Love." What that meant to me is because God hates sin so much, and since sin always seemed to be present within me on any given day, there was then a 50 percent chance that God was always angry with me. |
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This meant that for most of my Christian experience I was usually "cringing before God," because an angry Deity is a dangerous Being. However, this verse from Exodus 20 is actually revealing a startling revelation of how great God's love for you and me really is. Here we are told that the ratio of God's wrath compared to His love is not 50/50 at all! Instead, God's character contains a mixture of only "4 parts Wrath to a 1,000 parts Love!" |
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To put that into perspective, the Adventist church has been in existence for about 150 years, or basically 4 generations. During that time we have mostly preached and spoken of God's wrath, anger, judgment, punishment and hatred of sin. If the Adventist church now decides to speak only of God's love for the next 1,000 generations, then and only then can we as a church say that we have presented a balanced view of God! God's love truly is great, and He is definitely worthy of your best and highest praises! |
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