God's Wrath...To believe the OT or not.

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Along with my thread on hell this topic came up. Do Christians believe in the OT anymore? If God is the same yesterday, today, and forever than He also has wrath or is there a different God in the NT?

Of course I think that God has wrath tempered by His Love
 

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Along with my thread on hell this topic came up. Do Christians believe in the OT anymore? If God is the same yesterday, today, and forever than He also has wrath or is there a different God in the NT?

Of course I think that God has wrath tempered by His Love
First post!


Here is a question. If someone is "never changing" are they able to experience "emotion" since emotion means "to be moved internally"?
Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
 
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Sultan Of Swing

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Along with my thread on hell this topic came up. Do Christians believe in the OT anymore? If God is the same yesterday, today, and forever than He also has wrath or is there a different God in the NT?

Of course I think that God has wrath tempered by His Love
Paul explains very clearly in Romans that God is the same, He has not changed, and points to the OT to show how God promised the coming Messiah, that this great salvation was planned throughout history, while in Romans 1 making very clear the reality of God's wrath on humanity, about how all have knowledge of God and have sinned against Him. The wages of sin is death. Jesus Himself says He will come back to judge the living and the dead, and cast the wicked into the blazing furnace. God certainly has not changed.
 
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Winken

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First post!


Here is a question. If someone is "never changing" are they able to experience "emotion" since emotion means "to be moved internally"?
Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

e-motion is brain-fed energy-in-motion. It is all those tiny neurons surging across the synaptic cleft. Not representative of our utterly Spiritual, borderless, invisible God.
 
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Greg J.

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... Do Christians believe in the OT anymore? ...
Every person is unique. There is no thing that all people that call themselves Christians believe the same. In any large enough group of people, you will find every kind of person. Since you are asking, I assume you have not resolved the question in your mind.

Don't believe "in" the OT or NT, believe in God. Seek God not the Bible. Seek to know about God through the Bible. Seek to know God himself similarly to how you get to know a visible person better. Fulfill your side of a good relationship between a person and God and he will fulfill his side (with all the capabilities that God has).

The nature of the creator of the universe has never changed nor will it ever. However, he doesn't reveal his nature in one big massive revelation to us. (Fortunately: But, ” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” Exodus 33:20, 1984 NIV) He reveals himself a bit at a time to an individual. The Bible is our #1 source of what he is like and who he is. We might read the whole Bible, but we won't understand the whole Bible afterward. We must persist in seeking God if we want to know about him better and to know him better. Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. (Isaiah 55:6, 1984 NIV)

The God who revealed himself through the writers of the OT is the same God who revealed himself through the NT. His behavior in both parts of the Bible is consistent. It is the circumstances that vary. The story of the Jews in the OT is not all smiles, because when God started with them, they had hard hearts (unwilling to acknowledge God as GOD, unwilling to change their ways, unwilling to believe and trust what God said). It is only through God's grace that they started drawing closer to God. When they ought to have understood their calling as God's people, they turned away from it. Again and again.

God has always wanted what is best for all of mankind. But not intervening as he did meant everyone would become like the people prior to Noah as a result of their own choices.

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. (bold mine, John 3:19, 1984 NIV)

The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. (bold mine, Genesis 6:5, 1984 NIV)

It is essential to understand Romans 5:12-14:

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned—for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come. (bold mine, Romans 5:12-14, 1984 NIV)

It is the nature of the creation that sins bring death whether God passes judgment on someone or not. All he told mankind was not to eat of the fruit of a tree. Easy to understand. Easier to do than we are familiar with, since this was before sin entered the world. Only believing words contradictory to what God had already said created a stumbling block. He gave more commands after Adam sinned to save people and keep them from propagating sin, but people continued to reject God. As the sin of mankind increased, and since God loved us, he chose to intervene. God chose a group of people (the Jews) through whom the world would learn to turn away from the actions that would demand just punishment from God. (The Jews agreed because it would save them from slavery.) He gave the Jews the Law through Moses to reveal to them which things they were doing were resulting in eternal death. ... through the law we become conscious of sin. (Romans 3:20b, 1984 NIV)

They were supposed to obey and spread the saving truth. But they couldn't even get the first part right. Every so-called "harsh" act of God in the Old Testament was to stem the tide of sin that was continually spreading to give the descendants of those alive a better chance to avoid morally necessary punishment. The harshness is not because God is harsh, it is because the results of sin are far worse than we, today, usually imagine. Mankind basically said they didn't want God even as their judge. So he let some of sin's effects past his normal protection so we could get a taste of what the consequences of what we were doing were. The effects of sin are what is harsh, and to be honest, the worst horror you see in the OT is peanuts compared to sin's full and true effect. Whenever God intervened, if the people were of noble spirit, it turned them away from sin for a time. However, eventually they would turn back to sin, and God out of his love, would intervene again.

Some would like to say that God created us too predisposed to sin, but God didn't choose how predisposed to sin we would be. He made us perfect (in His image). There was no way to make humans better than he did. If humans had never sinned, they would have grown to be like God more and more. Some might say God created the universe too much against us, but he made the universe perfectly, too. It perfectly reflected the nature of its painter. There was no way to make the nature of the universe better for us.

God is love (from 1 John 4:8 and 1 John 4:16). Because of his own nature, God still wanted to save us in spite of the fact that every person that ever lived sinned. God's love is within himself. It does not depend on things (like people) external to him. Within God's nature was an allowance that someone of the same family could pay for the debt of another family member. (See another of my posts on this web site for more detail.) God became man so that the fact that he was the Father of all mankind would become Truth in the world. Because he had the ability to pay for our sins (which we did not), He paid for them. It cost him everything including his life in a sense I don't understand, but I can say one thing: Before Jesus came, God was all Spirit. After He became man, his honor was lowered in some way for our sake, because he became a part of something he created (a created thing deserves less honor than its creator, Hebrews 3:3).

When Jesus was born, the author of mankind became the highest person in all mankind (the Father of us all). All the authority that mankind had went to Jesus, the head of mankind. At that point he had the authority to save all of those who would recognize his authority over them (Hebrews 7:25). The fact that all people were his children does not have the necessary moral component for salvation unless a person accepts their place in God's family. Unless we accept Jesus as our Lord, we have not given him the right to save us. As a result, he is the Savior of all men [he died for all], and especially of those who believe. (comment in brackets mine, 1 Timothy 4:10, 1984 NIV)

Praise God!

“You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.” (Revelation 4:11, 1984 NIV)
 
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e-motion is brain-fed energy-in-motion. It is all those tiny neurons surging across the synaptic cleft. Not representative of our utterly Spiritual, borderless, invisible God.
It's just a hypothetical question. I don't necessarily believe this, but some have believed that God the Father is without emotion and His wrath and kindness are allegories for His judgement and mercy.
 
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Along with my thread on hell this topic came up. Do Christians believe in the OT anymore? If God is the same yesterday, today, and forever than He also has wrath or is there a different God in the NT?
Tne NT teaches that God lets the good and the bad grow up together and then the Lord's Day will come to destroy the bad and keep the good.

God's Wrath is not hate, it is doing Justice.
 
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ToBeLoved

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The important thing to understand is that the Old Testament was always temporary until Christ. After Christ is the New Covenant. The Old Testament is the Old Covenant.

The prophets and Old Testament was always waiting for the Savior, Jesus Christ. He changed everything. The Old Testament and Old Covenant were always meant to be replaced.
 
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The important thing to understand is that the Old Testament was always temporary until Christ. After Christ is the New Covenant. The Old Testament is the Old Covenant.

The prophets and Old Testament was always waiting for the Savior, Jesus Christ. He changed everything.

So then God is not the same today, yesterday, and forever since you said "He changed everything"?
 
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The Hammer of Witches

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Along with my thread on hell this topic came up. Do Christians believe in the OT anymore? If God is the same yesterday, today, and forever than He also has wrath or is there a different God in the NT?

Of course I think that God has wrath tempered by His Love
It is the same God, there are signs of his wrath and love in the OT and the NT. He rightly displays anger when Israel turns away, but he takes them back and reestablishes them because he loves his people. His love and wrath is displayed in the NT too. Christ's sacrifice was out of love, and the entire book of Revelation is his judgement on an unbelieving world that rejected the messiah. God does not change, God is love and life, and if you reject his love you bring his wrath upon you.
 
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Along with my thread on hell this topic came up. Do Christians believe in the OT anymore? If God is the same yesterday, today, and forever than He also has wrath or is there a different God in the NT?

Of course I think that God has wrath tempered by His Love

The Old and New testaments are inspired by the Holy Spirit. There is but ONE God creator. God is the same!
 
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The important thing to understand is that the Old Testament was always temporary until Christ. After Christ is the New Covenant. The Old Testament is the Old Covenant.

The prophets and Old Testament was always waiting for the Savior, Jesus Christ. He changed everything. The Old Testament and Old Covenant were always meant to be replaced.
Not even close to being an accurate account of scripture, Old Testament or New Testament.

The Old Testament contains law and gospel. The New Testament contains law and gospel. The law is: follow all these rules. The gospel is: salvation through faith. Some have mistakenly taught that following the rules of the law is/was a path to salvation.

The great faith chapter of Hebrews 11 teaches that even in the Old Testament times people were saved by faith in God. Jesus himself declared, Matthew 5:17 that the law in not abolished with his coming. So there you have gospel in the Old Testament and law in the New Testament.

Now for the matter of the covenants, yes the old covenant was replaced with the new covenant as Jesus declared. But learn that a covenant is not the source of salvation. It is something we as followers of God do because we are his people.
 
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AnticipateHisComing

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Do Christians believe in the OT anymore?
Such is the pathetic understandings of some today that the OT boils down to God's wrath and that the NT is just God is love, devoid of righteous judgement and wrath.

Obviously this mindset ignores Revelation which is very descriptive of God's wrath, and there are numerous other passages in the NT on God's wrath including Jesus' words.
 
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ToBeLoved

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So then God is not the same today, yesterday, and forever since you said "He changed everything"?
God is the same, Jesus brought a New Covenant. The Covenant's changed, not God. But certainly the permenant atonement for sin has brought New Covenant believer's many blessings.
 
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ToBeLoved

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Not even close to being an accurate account of scripture, Old Testament or New Testament.

The Old Testament contains law and gospel. The New Testament contains law and gospel. The law is: follow all these rules. The gospel is: salvation through faith. Some have mistakenly taught that following the rules of the law is/was a path to salvation.

The great faith chapter of Hebrews 11 teaches that even in the Old Testament times people were saved by faith in God. Jesus himself declared, Matthew 5:17 that the law in not abolished with his coming. So there you have gospel in the Old Testament and law in the New Testament.

Now for the matter of the covenants, yes the old covenant was replaced with the new covenant as Jesus declared. But learn that a covenant is not the source of salvation. It is something we as followers of God do because we are his people.
Sorry. This is very inaccurate.

Our salvation is in the New Covenant, through Jesus Christ and His shed blood. The New Covenant is the covenant that God makes with each of us. And as a seal of this covenant, we are given the Holy Spirit as both a seal of this covenant and as part of our inheritance as heirs of Jesus Christ.

You do not understand covenants or what a covenant with God is.
 
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Soyeong

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Along with my thread on hell this topic came up. Do Christians believe in the OT anymore? If God is the same yesterday, today, and forever than He also has wrath or is there a different God in the NT?

Of course I think that God has wrath tempered by His Love

There is just as much love and judgement in the OT and the NT, so God's character does not change. Marcion was an early believer who thought that the God of the OT was a different God and he was rejected as heretic, though some of what he taught is still alive and kicking.
 
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