(December 2, 2012 at 12:49 pm)TaraJo Wrote: Compare the Old Testament to the New Testament and you notice a pretty drastic changethere. OT god is a vengeful God, smiting people for any little infraction. NT god just kinda sits back and says "You'll get yours in the afterlife."
I mean, you look at the body counts between the two. What does god kill people over? In the OT, people have been killedfor making fun of a bald guy, or for attempting the 'withdrawl' method of birth control. In Exous, God directly takes credit for hardening Pharaoh's heart so he can show off, which means that when he killed the first born of Egypt, yeah, that's something God wanted to do. In the book of Job, he lets Job's family get slaughtered and Job himself get tortured just to prove a point.
On a side note, it's also worth noting the things god does NOT kill over. The mosiac laws alone say crazy things like rape a woman, you don't get killed unless she's already married while they also sentence people to death for working on a Sunday. The rest of the OT isn't much better: Get your dad drunk and seduce him, nobody dies. Murder your brother because you're playing favorites, again, you don't die.
However, overall, the god of the OT is pretty damn vengeful, right? So, what happened? New Testament god killed one guy I think, but since he brought two people back from death (Lazarus and Jesus), his body count is actually in the negatives. In fact, he doesn't raise a finger while his people are being killed, while his message is being silenced and the messengers are being tried, convicted and tortured.
How'd this happen, though? God is supposed to be perfect. However, God changed, which means he either wasn't perfect before that change and is perfect afteror he was perfect and then changed to become other than perfect.
God is still the God of wrath from the OT. For it is in the OT we learn and understand the absolute nature of God. The events play out so we can understand the relationship between sin and consenquence. Now again God has not changed, what was true then is still true now. What did happen? We have the attonement offered through the blood sacerfice Christ made. In the OT law we have a provision for sin. If one sins they could offer a sacerfice to take place of the sinner. When Christ came and died He became that sacerfice for us. So basically Christ took all of God's wrath upon Himself at the cross. So your sins have been covered, and do not demand instant payment. What that leaves is the choice you make in this life as to where you will spend the next. It's not a verbal one so don't bother naming and claiming. It is a choice of the Heart. Where you heart makes a desision your actions/works will follow suit.
