OT Wrath vs. NT Love - Deeper meanings

[SeekerSA]

Essentially I am a NT guy and have not delved deep into the Old Testament.

The Misogyny thread and another have probably run their course.

The purpose of this is to collect those wrathful OT texts and if the Lord has shown you a deeper meaning to them to present them with parallels here.

[Chris]

Hi Seeker,

I sort of look at it as "the destruction of all flesh" (every man, woman, and child).

The flesh must be destroyed so that the spirit can be saved in the day of the Lord.

[SeekerSA]

:bottlebump:

[Cardinal]

 :cloud9: How long have you got, LOL? I think probably every scripture in the OT reveals hidden truth that reveals some aspect of the spiritual works of God and Christ. Even single Hebrew words and even Hebrew letters speak of it. It can't do anything but that, because it came out of Him. Blessings to you.......

[Gizmo]

Seeker,

I still have trouble with the wrath of God in the OT, but am coming to an understanding of its necessity.  I see the core human problem, call it "original sin" if you like, is self-righteousness-our desire to be right with God by what we do.  We need the law and wrath to demonstrate that there is nothing we can do to be right with God by our actions.  Any attempt to follow the law will inevitably lead to death or giving up and looking to Jesus...the author AND FINISHER of faith. Thank God that Jesus took all the wrath of God for us and destroyed the law.

It's not very well thought out yet, but maybe you get my gyst???

Giz

[SeekerSA]

Seeker,

I still have trouble with the wrath of God in the OT, but am coming to an understanding of its necessity.  I see the core human problem, call it "original sin" if you like, is self-righteousness-our desire to be right with God by what we do.  We need the law and wrath to demonstrate that there is nothing we can do to be right with God by our actions.  Any attempt to follow the law will inevitably lead to death or giving up and looking to Jesus...the author AND FINISHER of faith. Thank God that Jesus took all the wrath of God for us and destroyed the law.

It's not very well thought out yet, but maybe you get my gyst???

Giz

Hi Giz

I agree except for the red bit, if that refers to all 630 odd levitical laws, I agree.  The 10 however remain.  8 of these are in all cultures in some form or another.  Of these 10, Jesus IMO fulfilled them and did not replace them.  Even so, we are under Grace not the law, neither the 10. However the 10 are written on our hearts and not on stone tablets.

Basically, Thou shalt not kill, is still relevant today.  Committing adultery has consequences esp. if you are caught.

Hope you get my gist.

I plan to do a study of the Levitical laws in the new year and see how they tied into the Hebrew culture.  What I see so far, the Levitical laws were add-ons and contradicted many times the Thou shalt not kill. IOW the levites had a view "Thou shalt not kill, unless...." fill in the blank and deferred it to Jehovah spake to Moses saying.....

Blessings

[Kept]

I am doing some studying on that myself and finding some very interesting things in that they were not a singular god people before they settled on yehweh as their god and he was actually one of the gods they believed in elevated to a singular god status. He was a god of war to begin with so its natural they would be a very warring nation and hear this god speak to them in this way.

its all very very interesting

kept

[Cindi]

I am doing some studying on that myself and finding some very interesting things in that they were not a singular god people before they settled on yehweh as their god and he was actually one of the gods they believed in elevated to a singular god status. He was a god of war to begin with so its natural they would be a very warring nation and hear this god speak to them in this way.

its all very very interesting

That is a really interesting.  Where did you find this info, kept?  What are you studying?

Cindi....

Mercy Not Sacrifice

[Kept]

Cindi Im reading several books at a time on the same basic subject but I will pm you the names

kept

[Cindi]

Seeker said:

I plan to do a study of the Levitical laws in the new year and see how they tied into the Hebrew culture.  What I see so far, the Levitical laws were add-ons and contradicted many times the Thou shalt not kill. IOW the levites had a view "Thou shalt not kill, unless...." fill in the blank and deferred it to Jehovah spake to Moses saying.....

.....and then later "Jehovah spake" to Joshua saying......"you know those Amorites to the west, and those Caananites by the coast...well this is what I want you to do to them...but first, let's talk about the city of Jehrico"

I am rereading Joshua right now.  Quite an eye re-opener.

Cindi....

Mercy Not Sacrifice

[SeekerSA]

Seeker said:

I plan to do a study of the Levitical laws in the new year and see how they tied into the Hebrew culture.  What I see so far, the Levitical laws were add-ons and contradicted many times the Thou shalt not kill. IOW the levites had a view "Thou shalt not kill, unless...." fill in the blank and deferred it to Jehovah spake to Moses saying.....

.....and then later "Jehovah spake" to Joshua saying......"you know those Amorites to the west, and those Caananites by the coast...well this is what I want you to do to them...but first, let's talk about the city of Jehrico"

I am rereading Joshua right now.  Quite an eye re-opener.

Cindi....

Mercy Not Sacrifice

Hi Cindi

Like I said, hopefully next year.  I cannot force anything unless God is directing me.  What I have shared here is merely a glimpse.  When I study I tend to dig into the word as opposed to a teaching.  That keeps my approach unbiased.

There are many stories in the OT that no one her even touch, Ezekiel's, "spaceship" for example.  In fact even in the mainstream I only once heard a teaching of it, that too is in the pipeline.

Jesus came to fulfil the Law so it stands to reason, in that fulfilment is a key to the OT.

Many say is is a shadow and/or a parable/prophesy of Jesus which I do not object to yet there has to be a deeper truth.

Jesus' main contention was with the "law keepers" in the NT and His ministry, what was supposed to have been revealed by the Law and the Prophets was kept hidden.

I like Molly see the whole bible in Gen 1-3 and there are sooo many layers there.  Knowing the Scribes and Pharisees were essentially the focus of Jesus' admonition and criticism, then it stands to reason, the fulfilment was not a replacement theology but demolition of the order of the day.  Blood sacrifice you did not desire etc. comes out of OT references and I would go so far as to say even the temple, and it's purpose and the rituals are questionable.

Did the Levites get it wrong, so far it looks like it.  When the veil was rent in two, what did it expose?  What was in the ark?  Where is it today, Ethiopia? Does it matter?

We see many trying to find their roots in the Hebraic culture wrt to Christianity.  The root of Christianity is Christ, He is the cornerstone.  He is the foundation. Reconciling us to the Father via Himself, was the object of His ministry.  If you find Jesus in the NT, why go back to the OT to look for Him there?  We need to merge the God of Love in the NT with the God of wrath of the OT, can you say religion?

I found Jesus more than enough in the NT.

Blessings

[Kept]

Amen !

me too Seeker, its really radically changing everything for me

can we say one stone will not be left on another? I see a destruction here going on in my life but Im simply standing here looking at the Lord thru the dust and He hasnt changed one iota, still the same, yesterday, today and forever!

He is a GOOD GOD

I believe and I choose this day whom I will serve

just the way it is and it is what it is to me

kept

[reFORMer]

I am doing some studying on that myself and finding some very interesting things in that they were not a singular god people before they settled on yehweh as their god and he was actually one of the gods they believed in elevated to a singular god status. He was a god of war to begin with so its natural they would be a very warring nation and hear this god speak to them in this way.

its all very very interesting

kept

There seems to be two strains or streams of "history of religions" and you're reading in one of them.  Much there is unsubstantiated logic, that polytheism was original and monotheism a later development.  There were always witnesses in the earth to the One True and Living God.  The great falling away in the days of Noah nevertheless did have Noah and his family.  Monotheism is the original belief and you can be sure that the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob kept a pure hand-me-down body of knowledge and experience of God.  This is why He says He chose Abraham, "Because I know that you will teach your children and they will teach their children, even unto many generations, whatsoever I tell unto you."

[Kept]

Yes there is the one truth but it has gotten picked up and mixed many times

I am not just reading one side by the way, I have both sides going and to top it off bible scholars that give credence to the 'other side' while remaining christian and not secular.

I appreciate you offering that because everyone should not take my words for anything but study to show themselves approved and wait on God to reveal things.

thanks

sadly we have to go these things alone for the most part because there is no room for questioning the norms ya know, not in groups

:HeartThrob:

kept

[reFORMer]

The anti-Biblical strain of Theology is a fairly recent development in only the last 150 to 200 years, though only with a strangle hold on mainline Protestant Seminaries since about 1890 in Europe and 1920 in the US, as well as Catholicism since about 1920 in Europe and 1940 in the US.  The following is an overly short presentation of this problem through a particular group that makes a racket out of proportion for their qualifications.
------------------------------------------------------
excerpt from

The Jesus Seminar: The Slippery Slope to Heresy

By Craig Branch

"Thus Saith the Lord" or "Hath God Said?"

The gradual shift from the inerrancy, infallibility, and authority of Scripture to the current state has been a complex historical process. The results of this digression has been a measurable degeneration and apostasy in many mainline Christian churches. Membership in these churches has significantly declined and American culture has shifted from a Judeo-Christian base to a humanistic, New Age, relativistic one, with increasing moral decline.

The growth of heterodoxy (heresy) grows best under certain conditions which enhance the mutations. The foundational departure creating a toxic dump for the growth of the weeds of this apostasy began over a hundred and fifty years ago in the early nineteenth century.

Social Darwinism's influence spread into many academic areas, including many seminaries. The rationalism of the Enlightenment began to dominate New Testament scholarship, especially in Germany. Evolution and scientism naturally challenged Biblical accounts of creation, miracles, and the supernatural (Christianity Through the Centuries, Cairns, p. 426).

German scholastics Wellhausen and Graf posited a theory that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses but evolved and was compiled from four different sources or traditions. This theory was surmised because of apparent stylistic and content differences present in the text.

This theory plus the philosophical ideas of Immanuel Kant greatly influenced the direction of liberalism and the science of textual criticism (Ibid., pp. 410-412). The area of textual criticism that has become mainstream in liberalism and neo-orthodoxy is called the historical-critical method.

The historical-critical method uses several approaches. Literary (source) criticism, form criticism, and redaction criticism are the most popular (see extended definitions in the Glossary of Liberal Theological Terms).

A primary example of this approach can be seen in what the "scholars" term "the Synoptic Problem." Some theologians see a problem in the fact that the Matthew, Mark, and Luke texts in the gospels have a number of very similar and some different accounts in them.
The assumption is that they either copied each other or from an unnamed, undiscovered text (i.e., the mysterious, phantom "Q" document), or that some editors (redactors) compiled oral stories much later and attributed them to the disciples (Is There a Synoptic Problem?, p. 10). These "scholars," who began with an anti-supernatural bias, speculated that books of the Bible were written much later than claimed, or that there were many mythological events recorded in the Bible. Most of these liberal pronouncements were demonstrated to be specious with the multitude of archeological discoveries verifying the historicity, as well as many thousands of manuscript discoveries dating very close to the original autographs of the New Testament.

In summary, the basic principles of the liberal historical-critical theory is the presupposition or a priori assumption that supernatural revelation from God as objective propositional truths is inconceivable to the critical intellect. God is excluded from consideration from the start. Biblical accounts are assumed to contain only man's evolving thoughts about God. Therefore God's word cannot be understood apart from careful use of hypothetical constructs of "scientific" critical approaches (Historical Criticism of the Bible, pp. 84-85).

(finis)
----------------------------------------------------
Gregory Boyd astutely observes, "Historical theories should be built upon the foundation of what is present in concrete evidence that is available; not in what is absent in hypothetical evidence that is altogether unavailable."

[Kept]

Thanks for that post, I havent read The Jesus seminars but have studied the jdep theory and it is facinating.

Anyways, there is a reason much hasnt been mainstream till now, the internet being one and the other for instance you mention wellhausen which if Im not mistaken was the original theorist of the jedp theory, and well if you research you can find out what happened to folks like him.

Whether we want to admit it or not, anyone actually testing things like Did Moses actually write the first five books will surely find themselves persecuted if not completely cut off. This has always been the norm for christianity. Start questioning some things and there is some very strong evidence that Moses did not in fact pen the first five books, but hey, lets not go there, too much crap to deal with if you do and you will find yourself cast out.

If one ever begins to question the bibles errancy and that what we have been taught to believe just might have gaping holes then all hell breaks loose

signs of a cult to me and for me Im looking and remaining as unbiased as I can be

thanks
kept

[Freebird]

This subject was a stumbling block for me and actually partly caused me to become an athiest for awhile. I could not believe some of the things the OT God was doing....I didn't want to worship such a vengeful, wrathful God and I could not reconcile things in my head. When I asked questions, people would say "well, God knows best and the people deserved (insert situation.)

This was beyond my comprehension as I always believed God was loving and forgiving. A lot of people have not actually read all of the OT and they speak of it freely....
To me, I see a huge difference between the OT God and the NT God.

I am not allowing this to be a stumbling block anymore as today I choose to believe in God. However, that being said, I still have trouble trying to reconcile the OT God to the God I worship....

[Kept]

Freebird you do well to follow hard after thee imo that thee that lives and breathes in you, ur makes room for that good God you know deep within you but even ur has holes imo

I dont know that there is a 'group' that really has the inerrant truth, but ur is by far closest to what I know in my heart to be true for me and Im so glad you found this camp. Its a great place to be.

I  hear ya about the ot God vs the nt God, someone once said 'Did God get saved between the ot and nt' well that sounds laughable but to us that have this wonderful good God within us often it sure seems like it huh haha

blessings on your house  :HeartThrob:

kept

[reFORMer]

.....and then later "Jehovah spake" to Joshua saying......"you know those Amorites to the west, and those Canaanites by the coast...well this is what I want you to do to them...but first, let's talk about the city of Jehrico"

Mercy Not Sacrifice

Yeah, "first, let's talk about the city of Jehrico."

It means "the city of Palms" or, "the city of the Moon."  After being circumcised again, crossing into Canaan, and establishing a reiteration of all that God had said and done before, Jericho was the first article of new business on their plate.  This is the false city of God, the false Bride.

here's an excerpt from my 9/7/07 post elsewhere  on tentmaker:
     D. Barton Payne gave us a sizable volume called Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy.  Using his calculations, after "Christ," which is number one, the prophetic topic with the second largest number of verses, three times as many as any other, is "Babylon."  Hidden within the Bible, every little boy and girl carries to Sunday School a book called, "Mother of Whores."  Yet the best selling books on the Church in the last couple of decades that I've examined remind us of the ostrich in the wilderness.  Perhaps their lack of judgment explains their popularity.  They make no mention of a false vine, false brethren, or the harlot:  Babylon.  She is not the Church.  The Church does not deceive us.  It is Babylon that "lies in wait at every corner" (Pr 7:12) to seduce.  The Ecclesia is God's girlfriend, the wife Christ died to obtain.  Too many use the term "Church" to refer to the Institutional Church which is more properly Babylon.  God's people are "called out" of Babylon, not out of the Church.

When they possessed the land it was to build a temple on a mountain in the capitol city.  In the Temple was the holy of holies, the heart of it all.  The temple had friezes of palm trees in gold all about it's interior.  The moon is not a cruel and perverted city of idolaters but the bride, then Israel, now including a fuller realization as the Church (Ecclesia.)  Until we deal with the false, we can't enter on into our inheritance.  Scripture says God's throne is founded and established on judgment.  Solomon brought in the glory and is a type of inheriting "the land" of our bodies by way of the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit, in incorruptible immortality as is this entrance into Canaan.  The first thing Solomon did on ascending to the throne was to have three men executed.  Ah, but which three?

---James Rohde

[Kept]

Again I would just like to point out that it doesnt have to be extremism, dang that thing just keeps popping up, its like the jack in the box and its always being wound by this unseen hand lol

There is a path in the middle of these things to me

kept

[reFORMer]

Kept,
I don't dismiss you from the bride in my heart, even if you entertain some of the more liberal critical theories and such.  It is obscure to me why they were never convincing to me.  Even more important is what we do with what we are supposed to be Masters over, and I know I knew God when I couldn't get myself to obey what I knew to be right.  Should I not walk in that mercy to others?  How I suffered because I could not believe in God's persistent display of grace to me, a wretched "Pete and repeat" sinner.  Have I learned my lesson?  Really, the "no condemnation" realm is inhabited by walking around after the Spirit.  Many think it is only to themselves, but as long as you believe others are condemned, you can't get rid of condemnation except deceptively, which is where many are stuck.  Am I pleased with the grin on the face of Him around the corner, leaning on...what is it?  Is it a chastening rod?
---James

[Kept]

well thanks for not dismissing me  :HeartThrob:

God bless

kept

[Redlettervoice]

Reformer: Yeah, "first, let's talk about the city of Jehrico."

It means "the city of Palms" or, "the city of the Moon."  After being circumcised again, crossing into Canaan, and establishing a reiteration of all that God had said and done before, Jericho was the first article of new business on their plate.  This is the false city of God, the false Bride.

ReFORMer, I didn't know that Jericho meant that!  Thank you!  City of the Moon, huh?  I
remember that in Rev. too, the "woman" who gave birth to the MANchild had the MOON
under her feet!  YOu
will remember that it was said "don't build Jericho again!"  Just recently I heard connected to
that was "if I build again those things that I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor." 

That sort of goes with what you said. 

[Kept]

James

is chastening evil to you or God using evil? It is to many apparently.

I dont lump chastening into God using evil. Love has many spectrums just as white does.

To me the fact that evil exists is a mystery of iniquity that some seem to be sure they understand

I dont claim to understand it but one thing I do claim to believe

God is Love and Love doesnt act like a terrorist

1Co 13:4 Love (God) has patience,(God) is kind; love (God) is not envious; love (God) is not vain, (God)is not puffed up;
1Co 13:5 (God) does not behave indecently,(God) does not pursue its own things, (God)is not easily provoked,(God) thinks no evil;
1Co 13:6 (God) does not rejoice in unrighteousness, (God)but rejoices in the truth.
1Co 13:7 (God)Love quietly covers all things, (God)believes all things, (God)hopes all things,(God) endures all things.
1Co 13:8 (God)Love never fails.


kept

[Kept]

When I was pregnant I was gathering info on how to parent. I was raised very disfunctionally so how is this going to work God?

I read a James Dobson book on raising a child. When My daughter was very very small she became very defiant one night. I put the Dobson plan in action and I spanked her, no difference. Same behavior, but dobson said to stick to your ground, do not give in or they will run over you the rest of your life. This is the time to set the stage for her future. So I stood my ground, I spanked her again. This happened several times till we both were broken and sobbing.

She has never been spanked since that night and the Dobson book was thrown in the garbage where it belonged.

I learned my daughter does not need a spanking, she needs reasoning and love. My daughter learns really well. She is not without the ability to understand without a two by four approach.

Maybe Im just blessed but I tend to think all children really learn best from real love and time and reasoning together.

Let the big bad evil world and the devil and his compadres throw evil at her but from her parent she will always get love and reasoning till she gains the upper hand and knows how to walk on him, how to be in the world and not of it.

Evil can stay where it belongs and Love where it belongs

just my  :2c: