The Scriptures Are Subjective

[Dichotomy Girl]

Originally Posted by votivesoul

You know, there is more revealed about Jesus in the New Testament being the executor of God's wrath and vengeance than at first glance.

While we see the gentle (not soft) loving Savior willingly sacrificing Himself for the sins of the world, we also read verses like the following:

Luke 19:27,



This is a parable in which the Lord teaches that the Jewish people of Jerusalem, specifically the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees, were going to be destroyed. This happened in 70 AD, nearly forty years after the Lord ascended to heaven, in which the Roman empire starved out and nearly annihilated the entire city. Murder, cannibalism, and other unmentionable debaucheries took place within the walls during the siege. After the siege, the Romans crucified THOUSANDS.

This all happened why? Because Jerusalem didn't know the time of her royal visitation by Messiah Jesus.

Additionally, Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10,



It is the Lord Jesus of the New Testament (and not the God of the Old) that will avenge the Father with fire upon all those who don't know God and don't obey the Gospel centered around His Son's life.

In fact, we see that Christ's vengeance is so terrible, all who suffer it will experience "everlasting destruction".

Further, in Revelation 6 we read of the first 6 seals on the scroll being opened by none other than Jesus Christ. It is He, through the opening of the scrolls, that unleashes the following:

Four horsemen who have the power to "conquer", to wage "war" and take "peace" from the earth, utterly destroy the global economy, and finally, to kill 1/4 of the planet's population at the time (Jesus indirectly responsible for close to 2 billion deaths? What?).

And this isn't even all. At the opening of the sixth seal, the great day of the Lamb's wrath is unleashed on the world, as if the first four seals weren't bad enough.

And if one continues on through Revelation, one sees Jesus trampling underfoot as if in a wine-press the fierceness of God's wrath, until the blood of His enemies drench the skirt of His robes. We see Him waging the battle of Armageddon, in which there is so much death and destruction, we are given a gruesome image in which a sea of blood nearly six feet deep covers the valley just outside the city of Jerusalem. We also read of the Lord presiding over the smoke of the eternal torment in the lake which burns with fire all them who took the mark of the beast.

So what happened to the New Testament depiction of Christ as this all (and only merciful) lover and lowly friend to sinners?

Sorry, that is only half the picture. The rest of the story is the avenging Christ, who shall rule with a rod of iron and not spare His enemies until they are made His footstool, until He has thoroughly and utterly conquered the world in righteous indignation.

Only until we see and accept both sides of the equation can we get an accurate understanding of who and what the Lord Jesus, the Son and Incarnation of the God of the Old Testament, is.

And would you worship a god like this because you love him or because you are afraid not to?

How can the same God that commands us to love and forgive our enemies, kill and torture His? It would give ultimate meaning to he phrase "Absolute power corrupts absolutely"

I'm not talking about things that we don't understand, or things that happened because we live in a fallen world where we are given free will. I get that bad things happen to good people, etc. It's when things that we universally acknowledge as being evil are called Holy because someone says that God told them to do it. If God wanted to give the Jews the promised land, and wanted to clear out the people in it. God could have have done it himself. He could have created a new land out of nothing, and placed in the middle of all the other populated lands. He could have made an island rise up out of the sea....