The Anger of the Lord
By Jesse Morrell
The greatest privilege that I have been giving by the Lord is the opportunity to preach the gospel of forgiveness every week. Although I may not speak inside a church building every week to those who are saved, I am able to go out into the open-air and proclaim the truth of God to the condemned. Usually I only hear the true gospel preached from street preachers now a day but there are a few exceptions. We are living in a time of a backslidden church that has her eyes on the very same ends that the eyes of the world are on: privilege, prestige, popularity, and prosperity. Because of the many itching ear pew dwellers that sit in the churches, there are those in the pulpits itch those ears for their own personal gain rather then to convict the hearts of their hearers with the truth of God. Due to all this, the truth that the bible teaches is usually very different from what many churches are teaching. Candy may be sweet to your tooth, but it is unhealthy to your body. The meat of God may be hard to chew on at times, but its what we need.
Nice lovely pleasant to my heart and ear messages is what is plaguing the church! Appearing to be helpful it is truly harmful. Its appearance of being non-threatening is what makes it such a threat. As inoffensive it is to man, it is an offense to God because preaching like that is the most comfortable way to kill the church! It makes the church feel good while it dies. You commit spiritual suicide when you decided to attend a church that makes you feel comfortable as opposed to convicted. Rather then curing the blind eyes of the church by showing it reality, we put a bandage over the eyes of the church to hide their infirmity and bring comfort to their flesh. What will wake up the church from its deep slumber which it has fallen into? The cure we need is to hear confronting, convicting, and correcting messages or else sin wont be confronted, sinners wont be convicted, and lives wont be corrected! Sure some people wont like it. Some people will hate it. In fact, most people will hate it. But I have learned that no matter what you say, how you say it, or where you say it, there will always be somebody, somewhere, who doesnt like it for some reason. If only we started preaching the truth and didnt worry how people would respond to it. If only we were like Stephen in the book of Acts when he preached and put ours eyes on Jesus at the throne rather then putting our eyes on the people in front of us, maybe then we would see great moving of God. You will never please the audience of One until you perform for the audience of One.
Ian Paisley said I want to tell you friend that if we ever needed to speak out strongly we need to speak out today. If we ever needed to battle against sin and ungodliness in the age, we need to battle against it now. This is not a day to go conforming to the world. This is a day to go to the Jordon to bath. And when you die to what the world thinks about you. And when you die to what you brethren think about you. And when you die to what your neighbors think about you, and you rise to walk in newness of life then God will bless you as a Christian. The church is so blind as to not see that weak messages produce weak converts, but strong messages produce strong converts.
God is love is a message we have all heard countless times. God is love and God loves you is preached so often that I think maybe some churches dont have any other messages. Everybody from saints to sinners absolutely love to hear this message. Politicians, prostitutes, and every type of pleasure pursuer delight in the message that God is love. However there is another message that the bible has which is not so well received among sinful men. That message is that God is angry. These two messages are not opposed one to the other as some people assume. They are two sides to the same coin. The biblical truth that God is love and God is angry are so tightly connected that I do not believe you can remove them from each other. It is not the one or the other as I can see how some may believe. Rather, because God loves godliness, He is angry when ungodliness is committed. Because God loves righteousness, He is angry when unrighteousness is committed. Because God loves the truth, He is angered when lies are taught. His love is the source of His holiness, His justice, and His anger.
One of the last teachings sinners and a backslidden church wants to hear is a message that God is angry but Ill preach it anyways. And He commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is He who was ordained by God to be Judge of the living and the dead. Acts 10:42. If we do not preach that, then we do not preach at all. We can not deny the truth that God is a just judge, and God is angry with the wicked every day. (Ps 7:11). Keith Green made a great point when he said We often hear people say Im tried of hell-fire and brimstone preaching. Well I often reply to them when was the last time you ever heard any? The deadly waves of false teaching have flooded the church today and many are downing in false comfort as a result. The message of the anger and the wrath of our offended God certainly are very rarely, if ever, preached on today and yet the greatest threat to sinners is God Himself! That is exactly why this message is on the anger of the Lord.
There are four questions I am seeking to answer:
1) Is the anger of God biblical and towards who is it directed?
2) How often is the Lord provoked to anger?
3) How will Gods anger affect wicked men?
4) Will the anger of God burn forever?
1) Is the anger of God biblical and towards who is it directed?
The scriptures make it abundantly clear that our God is at times an angry God. Deut. 4:21, 2Sa 22:8, 1Ki 11:9, 2Ki 17:18, 2Ch 28:9, Ps 7:11, Ps 18:7, Zec 1:2, Lu 14:21, Heb 3:10. Time and time again throughout the scriptures we are told about the anger of God. Any Christian, who knows his bible as he ought to, can not deny this fact even if he wanted to. All truths that the scriptures declare must be accepted by the church or the church fails to be the church. If we do not accept all the truth of God then we fall into idolatry, picking and choosing what to believe and inevitably making up a false god in the realm of imagination.
Genesis 1:27 says So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God is not void of emotion. We were created in the image of God and feel the same emotions that God feels and God feels all emotions. He doesnt have the emotion of joy and gladness only but He also gets angry. The reason we ourselves are angered when we see an obvious injustice is because we were created in Gods image. To believe that God does not feel emotion, even the emotion of anger, is not to believe in the scriptures. Although anger usually seems to have a negative connotation to it, it is not always negative. Even Christians are told Be angry, and sin not. Eph 4:26. What you do with you anger may be negative, more then being negative it may be sin, but righteous anger is of God.
There are those today that teach that God was different in the Old Testament then He is today. I myself once entertained the thought that maybe the God of the Old Testament was angry while the God of the New Testament was not so. Although some preachers may teach that in congregations all over America and other countries right now, lets ask ourselves what does the bible say? Malachi 3:6 says For I am the Lord, I do not change. The Lord is the same yesterday, today, and forever! God doesnt change. From age to age Hes still the same. The Lord is a rock. He is solid. He does not change like soft clay. His character is the same now after the birth of Christ as it was before the birth of Christ. As much as the Lord rejoices at times, for example when sinners repent, He is still the same yesterday today and forever. If He had changed once, then He may change again but He doesnt change! The only thing that seemed to have change is our view of Him. The Lord of the Old Testament is still the God of the New Testament. The same God that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and flooded the earth with water is the same God that reigns from Heaven today.
There are also New Testament examples of the anger of God. Luke 14:21 is one of them. In this parable, the Lord sent His servant to go and invited certain people to come to a great supper, but those whom were invited all made excuses. So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.
Towards who is Gods anger directed? It is a common misconception that God is angry with sin but He is not angry sinners. However God is angry with sin and also with sinners themselves. A man does not merely get angry with deadly poison; he gets angry with the snake from which it comes. Romans 1:18 tells us that God is against sin. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, Then Romans 2:2 tells us that God is against the sinners themselves also. But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things. So the Lord is against sin and sinners.
Zeph. 4-6 says I will stretch out My hand against those who have turned back from following the Lord. The prophets would say things like The word of the Lord is against you. Young Jeremiah said "The Lord sent me to prophesy against this house and against this city. Jer 26:12. Ezekiel said thus says the Lord God: 'Indeed I, even I, am against you Eze 5:8. God would often send people to preach against a certain place or to preach against a certain people. Some examples: Isa 21:13, 22:1, 23:1, Jer 1:18, 22:7, 21:13, 23:2, 26:12, 36:2, 44:11, 50:31, 51:25, 51:62, Eze 4:3, 4:7, 5:8, 5:16, 5:17, 6:3, 7:3, 13:8, 13:9, 13:20, 14:8, 15:7,16:27, 21:3, 21:31, 23:22, 23:25, 25:7, 26:3, 28:22, 29:3, 29:10, 35:3, 38:3, 39:1, Am 3:1, 5:1, 6:14, Mic 1:2, 2:3, Na 2:13, 3:5, Hab 2:16, Zep 2:5, Mal 3:5, Ho 4:1. Because sinners are for ungodliness, God is against the ungodly. He is against all those who are against Him.
Malachi 3:5 says And I will come near you for judgment; I will be a swift witness against sorcerers, against adulterers, against perjurers, against those who exploit wage earners and widows and orphans, and against those who turn away an alien because they do not fear me. Says the Lord of hosts. God is not only against sorceries, God is against sorcerers. God is not only against adulteries, God is against adulterers. God is not only against perjury, God is against perjurers. That applies to all sin. God is not only against drunkenness, God is against drunkards. God is not only against homosexuality, God is against homosexuals. Even Peter wrote But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil." 1 Peter 3:12. Notice Peter doesnt say The face of the Lord is against evil as true as that statement would be. Rather Peter wrote The face of the Lord is against those who do evil.
Jesus Christ not only preached against sin, but our Master preached against sinners. Jesus did not say Woe to hypocrisy but He said Woe to you hypocrites Matt 23:13. And they sought to lay hands on Him, but feared the multitude, for they knew He had spoken the parable against them. Mark 12:12. Christ also preached against cities just like the prophets of old by pronouncing their woes. Then He began to rebuke the cities in which most of His mighty works had been done, because they did not repent Matt 11:20. Jesus also commanded His disciples to speak against people and places. And whoever will not receive you, when you go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet as a testimony against them." Luke 9:5. Stephen in the book of acts not only preached against sin but also against sinners, and that is what got him killed. He said You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears. You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did our fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers. Who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it. Acts 7:51-53.
It was 1845 when E. W. Hengstenberg wrote regarding Psalms 7:11. He wrote The prophet takes a lesson from a coarse human similitude, in order that he might inspire terror unto the ungodly. For he speaks against stupid and hardened people, who would not apprehend the reality of a divine judgment of which he had just spoken; but they might possibly be brought to consider this by greater earnestness on the part of man.
Those today that are like Jesus and follow in His footsteps for ministry are not being treated any better then Jesus was. Acceptance by God often is accompanied by rejection by man. It is true that there are few people today that preach against sin and sinners and those who do so are certainly not on Americas most popular preachers list. David Wilkerson wrote this, I tell you, America has become sick! You cant tell me that God isnt angry, that Hes simply overlooking it all. I once received a note from a well-known evangelist that read, Dont speak against America. Her best days are ahead. God is pleased! No! That is exactly what the Bible says the false prophets will claim in the last days!
The rest can be read on my site, it was too large to post
By Jesse Morrell
The greatest privilege that I have been giving by the Lord is the opportunity to preach the gospel of forgiveness every week. Although I may not speak inside a church building every week to those who are saved, I am able to go out into the open-air and proclaim the truth of God to the condemned. Usually I only hear the true gospel preached from street preachers now a day but there are a few exceptions. We are living in a time of a backslidden church that has her eyes on the very same ends that the eyes of the world are on: privilege, prestige, popularity, and prosperity. Because of the many itching ear pew dwellers that sit in the churches, there are those in the pulpits itch those ears for their own personal gain rather then to convict the hearts of their hearers with the truth of God. Due to all this, the truth that the bible teaches is usually very different from what many churches are teaching. Candy may be sweet to your tooth, but it is unhealthy to your body. The meat of God may be hard to chew on at times, but its what we need.
Nice lovely pleasant to my heart and ear messages is what is plaguing the church! Appearing to be helpful it is truly harmful. Its appearance of being non-threatening is what makes it such a threat. As inoffensive it is to man, it is an offense to God because preaching like that is the most comfortable way to kill the church! It makes the church feel good while it dies. You commit spiritual suicide when you decided to attend a church that makes you feel comfortable as opposed to convicted. Rather then curing the blind eyes of the church by showing it reality, we put a bandage over the eyes of the church to hide their infirmity and bring comfort to their flesh. What will wake up the church from its deep slumber which it has fallen into? The cure we need is to hear confronting, convicting, and correcting messages or else sin wont be confronted, sinners wont be convicted, and lives wont be corrected! Sure some people wont like it. Some people will hate it. In fact, most people will hate it. But I have learned that no matter what you say, how you say it, or where you say it, there will always be somebody, somewhere, who doesnt like it for some reason. If only we started preaching the truth and didnt worry how people would respond to it. If only we were like Stephen in the book of Acts when he preached and put ours eyes on Jesus at the throne rather then putting our eyes on the people in front of us, maybe then we would see great moving of God. You will never please the audience of One until you perform for the audience of One.
Ian Paisley said I want to tell you friend that if we ever needed to speak out strongly we need to speak out today. If we ever needed to battle against sin and ungodliness in the age, we need to battle against it now. This is not a day to go conforming to the world. This is a day to go to the Jordon to bath. And when you die to what the world thinks about you. And when you die to what you brethren think about you. And when you die to what your neighbors think about you, and you rise to walk in newness of life then God will bless you as a Christian. The church is so blind as to not see that weak messages produce weak converts, but strong messages produce strong converts.
God is love is a message we have all heard countless times. God is love and God loves you is preached so often that I think maybe some churches dont have any other messages. Everybody from saints to sinners absolutely love to hear this message. Politicians, prostitutes, and every type of pleasure pursuer delight in the message that God is love. However there is another message that the bible has which is not so well received among sinful men. That message is that God is angry. These two messages are not opposed one to the other as some people assume. They are two sides to the same coin. The biblical truth that God is love and God is angry are so tightly connected that I do not believe you can remove them from each other. It is not the one or the other as I can see how some may believe. Rather, because God loves godliness, He is angry when ungodliness is committed. Because God loves righteousness, He is angry when unrighteousness is committed. Because God loves the truth, He is angered when lies are taught. His love is the source of His holiness, His justice, and His anger.
One of the last teachings sinners and a backslidden church wants to hear is a message that God is angry but Ill preach it anyways. And He commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is He who was ordained by God to be Judge of the living and the dead. Acts 10:42. If we do not preach that, then we do not preach at all. We can not deny the truth that God is a just judge, and God is angry with the wicked every day. (Ps 7:11). Keith Green made a great point when he said We often hear people say Im tried of hell-fire and brimstone preaching. Well I often reply to them when was the last time you ever heard any? The deadly waves of false teaching have flooded the church today and many are downing in false comfort as a result. The message of the anger and the wrath of our offended God certainly are very rarely, if ever, preached on today and yet the greatest threat to sinners is God Himself! That is exactly why this message is on the anger of the Lord.
There are four questions I am seeking to answer:
1) Is the anger of God biblical and towards who is it directed?
2) How often is the Lord provoked to anger?
3) How will Gods anger affect wicked men?
4) Will the anger of God burn forever?
1) Is the anger of God biblical and towards who is it directed?
The scriptures make it abundantly clear that our God is at times an angry God. Deut. 4:21, 2Sa 22:8, 1Ki 11:9, 2Ki 17:18, 2Ch 28:9, Ps 7:11, Ps 18:7, Zec 1:2, Lu 14:21, Heb 3:10. Time and time again throughout the scriptures we are told about the anger of God. Any Christian, who knows his bible as he ought to, can not deny this fact even if he wanted to. All truths that the scriptures declare must be accepted by the church or the church fails to be the church. If we do not accept all the truth of God then we fall into idolatry, picking and choosing what to believe and inevitably making up a false god in the realm of imagination.
Genesis 1:27 says So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God is not void of emotion. We were created in the image of God and feel the same emotions that God feels and God feels all emotions. He doesnt have the emotion of joy and gladness only but He also gets angry. The reason we ourselves are angered when we see an obvious injustice is because we were created in Gods image. To believe that God does not feel emotion, even the emotion of anger, is not to believe in the scriptures. Although anger usually seems to have a negative connotation to it, it is not always negative. Even Christians are told Be angry, and sin not. Eph 4:26. What you do with you anger may be negative, more then being negative it may be sin, but righteous anger is of God.
There are those today that teach that God was different in the Old Testament then He is today. I myself once entertained the thought that maybe the God of the Old Testament was angry while the God of the New Testament was not so. Although some preachers may teach that in congregations all over America and other countries right now, lets ask ourselves what does the bible say? Malachi 3:6 says For I am the Lord, I do not change. The Lord is the same yesterday, today, and forever! God doesnt change. From age to age Hes still the same. The Lord is a rock. He is solid. He does not change like soft clay. His character is the same now after the birth of Christ as it was before the birth of Christ. As much as the Lord rejoices at times, for example when sinners repent, He is still the same yesterday today and forever. If He had changed once, then He may change again but He doesnt change! The only thing that seemed to have change is our view of Him. The Lord of the Old Testament is still the God of the New Testament. The same God that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and flooded the earth with water is the same God that reigns from Heaven today.
There are also New Testament examples of the anger of God. Luke 14:21 is one of them. In this parable, the Lord sent His servant to go and invited certain people to come to a great supper, but those whom were invited all made excuses. So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.
Towards who is Gods anger directed? It is a common misconception that God is angry with sin but He is not angry sinners. However God is angry with sin and also with sinners themselves. A man does not merely get angry with deadly poison; he gets angry with the snake from which it comes. Romans 1:18 tells us that God is against sin. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, Then Romans 2:2 tells us that God is against the sinners themselves also. But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things. So the Lord is against sin and sinners.
Zeph. 4-6 says I will stretch out My hand against those who have turned back from following the Lord. The prophets would say things like The word of the Lord is against you. Young Jeremiah said "The Lord sent me to prophesy against this house and against this city. Jer 26:12. Ezekiel said thus says the Lord God: 'Indeed I, even I, am against you Eze 5:8. God would often send people to preach against a certain place or to preach against a certain people. Some examples: Isa 21:13, 22:1, 23:1, Jer 1:18, 22:7, 21:13, 23:2, 26:12, 36:2, 44:11, 50:31, 51:25, 51:62, Eze 4:3, 4:7, 5:8, 5:16, 5:17, 6:3, 7:3, 13:8, 13:9, 13:20, 14:8, 15:7,16:27, 21:3, 21:31, 23:22, 23:25, 25:7, 26:3, 28:22, 29:3, 29:10, 35:3, 38:3, 39:1, Am 3:1, 5:1, 6:14, Mic 1:2, 2:3, Na 2:13, 3:5, Hab 2:16, Zep 2:5, Mal 3:5, Ho 4:1. Because sinners are for ungodliness, God is against the ungodly. He is against all those who are against Him.
Malachi 3:5 says And I will come near you for judgment; I will be a swift witness against sorcerers, against adulterers, against perjurers, against those who exploit wage earners and widows and orphans, and against those who turn away an alien because they do not fear me. Says the Lord of hosts. God is not only against sorceries, God is against sorcerers. God is not only against adulteries, God is against adulterers. God is not only against perjury, God is against perjurers. That applies to all sin. God is not only against drunkenness, God is against drunkards. God is not only against homosexuality, God is against homosexuals. Even Peter wrote But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil." 1 Peter 3:12. Notice Peter doesnt say The face of the Lord is against evil as true as that statement would be. Rather Peter wrote The face of the Lord is against those who do evil.
Jesus Christ not only preached against sin, but our Master preached against sinners. Jesus did not say Woe to hypocrisy but He said Woe to you hypocrites Matt 23:13. And they sought to lay hands on Him, but feared the multitude, for they knew He had spoken the parable against them. Mark 12:12. Christ also preached against cities just like the prophets of old by pronouncing their woes. Then He began to rebuke the cities in which most of His mighty works had been done, because they did not repent Matt 11:20. Jesus also commanded His disciples to speak against people and places. And whoever will not receive you, when you go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet as a testimony against them." Luke 9:5. Stephen in the book of acts not only preached against sin but also against sinners, and that is what got him killed. He said You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears. You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did our fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers. Who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it. Acts 7:51-53.
It was 1845 when E. W. Hengstenberg wrote regarding Psalms 7:11. He wrote The prophet takes a lesson from a coarse human similitude, in order that he might inspire terror unto the ungodly. For he speaks against stupid and hardened people, who would not apprehend the reality of a divine judgment of which he had just spoken; but they might possibly be brought to consider this by greater earnestness on the part of man.
Those today that are like Jesus and follow in His footsteps for ministry are not being treated any better then Jesus was. Acceptance by God often is accompanied by rejection by man. It is true that there are few people today that preach against sin and sinners and those who do so are certainly not on Americas most popular preachers list. David Wilkerson wrote this, I tell you, America has become sick! You cant tell me that God isnt angry, that Hes simply overlooking it all. I once received a note from a well-known evangelist that read, Dont speak against America. Her best days are ahead. God is pleased! No! That is exactly what the Bible says the false prophets will claim in the last days!
The rest can be read on my site, it was too large to post
