Sure, loads of folks think they like God, but do they know him well enough to be sure? And some folks don’t like God, but do they know him well enough to be sure?
Here are some things that a lot of folks don’t know about God—things that might change someone’s mind, one way or the other.
God Hates Injustice
Before God established the Earth, he had created some high-level, angel-type beings that he called “sons of God” (ben `elohiym, for those of you who are into Hebrew). They were also called “gods”, which may strike us as odd today as our churches tend to steer us away from a fuller understanding of the Bible, but this was well known to early Hebrews.
His plan for the sons of God was that they would join him in a “Divine Council”, and work together to run the world. They all rejoiced when God created the Earth (see Job 38:7), but by the time Psalm 82 was written, they had become unjust, and God pronounced judgment on them–sentencing them to death. Here, read this very short psalm and see what perturbed him about their behavior and what he thought they should have been doing instead:
Psalm 82:1 God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
2 “How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
3 Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”5 They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.6 I said, “You are gods,
sons of the Most High, all of you;
7 nevertheless, like men you shall die,
and fall like any prince.”
8 Arise, O God, judge the earth;
for you shall inherit all the nations!
God had called them “Sons of God” because he loved them and had created them on purpose. Yet at their injustice, he was willing to kill them.
Do you like that about God? This idea that he would not maintain a relationship with the unjust? Or would you rather that God be the sort who continually accepts everybody in spite of ungodly behavior? Do you like it that God wants justice to be given even to the poor and needy? Or are you the sort who thinks it’s OK for the rich to run over the poor? (And while we’re on the topic, please note that God called for justice for the oppressed, and not for handouts.)
If you’d like to learn more about God’s view of injustice, read the list of passages here.
Why The Flood?
Noah’s flood did not come about simply because God was in a bad mood one day and decided to waste the planet. It was because the sons of God had left their proper roles and decided to intermarry with human women so as to have their own offspring.
Genesis 6:1 When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 4 The Nephilim (giants) were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
They were corrupting the human race, and their offspring (who were giants) were creating havoc on the Earth. Here are some more details on that from the Book of Enoch.
1 Enoch 6:1 1. And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. 2. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: ‘Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.’ … 7:1. And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants. 2. And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells: 3. Who consumed all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, 4. the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. 5. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another’s flesh, and drink the blood. 6. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.
This is why God sent the flood—to wipe out those giants. He put those particular sons of God in prison for it (see 2 Peter 2:4-5 and Jude 1:6, and yet it happened again later: The Nephilim (giants) were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, (Genesis 6:4).
The giants after the flood became the project of Israel’s armies. Have you ever noticed that in their wars, only sometimes did God command them to wipe out every living thing in a culture—including men, women, children, and animals? As it happens, those were the cultures where the giants lived. This was not God’s way of dealing with cultures made simply of humans.
Many dislike God because they think he’s a hothead and a bully. They have no idea that the flood and these battles were to preserve the peace for humankind.
God Hates Violence and Violent People
I’ll just let some one-liners from scripture do the talking on this point.
Psalm 11:5 The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
Proverbs 3:30 Do not contend with a man for no reason,
when he has done you no harm.
31 Do not envy a man of violence
and do not choose any of his ways,
32 for the devious person is an abomination to the Lord,
but the upright are in his confidence.
Our culture is filled with violence and entertainment about violence. We go to war, to the destruction of many innocents, which we brazenly call “collateral damage”, yet such war is praised not only in the political forum, but in the churches! Here’s a list of passages about violence. See for yourself that what so many love and embrace is an abomination to God.
Do you really like this about God? Or would you rather that these passages weren’t in the Bible?
God Expects Righteous People to Be Intellectually Honest
This is one of the best-kept open secrets in the world. The Bible is fulled with language that makes it quite obvious that God expects righteous people also to be righteous in the way they use their minds. He expects them to consider the evidence before passing judgment, to be honest and diligent, to be reasonable, and to take caution against deceiving themselves.
- Haggai 1:7 Give careful thought to your ways.
- Isaiah 1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord.
- Proverbs 23:7 As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.
- Proverbs 12:17 Whoever speaks the truth gives honest evidence, but a false witness utters deceit.
- 1 Corinthians 11:28 Let a person examine himself.
- 1 Corinthians 11:31 If we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.
- 2 Corinthians 13:1 Every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses….
- 2 Corinthians 13:5 Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves!
- Proverbs 18:17 The first to plead his case seems right, Until another comes and examines him.
- James 4:8 Purify your hearts, you double-minded.
- 1 Corinthians 14:20 Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.
- Romans 12:3 Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment.
- John 7:24 Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.
- James 1:26 If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.
- Luke 8:15 As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.
- Jeremiah 37:9 …do not deceive yourselves…
- 1 Corinthians 3:18 …do not deceive yourselves…
- James 1:22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.
In our culture, many people think it’s a real drag to have to be intellectually diligent. To God, however, this seems a necessary part of human behavior. Do you like this about God, or do you resent it? Many people who go on and on about how much they love God are actually quite resistant to this idea of intellectual diligence.
The Eternal, Conscious Torture of the Lake of Fire Was Only for the Rebellious Sons of God and Their Angels
A lot of people get this one wrong, so God gets a bad reputation for something he never did. The confusion results from reading passages about the Lake of Fire without first understanding who these rebellions sons of God were. Here’s the passage where most go wrong:
Revelation 20:7 And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison 8 and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. 9 And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, 10 and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. 11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. 13 And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. 14 Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15 And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
Here we see that the “devil”, the “beast” and the “false prophet” were all tossed into the Lake of Fire where we are explicitly told that they would be tormented “forever and ever”. And then at the end of this passage, we see that the dead humans in Hades were judged and those who were not found in the book of life were also thrown into the Lake of Fire.
What does not meet the eye in this particular passage is that this Lake of Fire had been specifically created not for humans, but “for Satan and his angels”:
Matthew 25:41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
Humans were to be thrown in it too, because they had followed along in the rebellion of Satan, and had worshiped him and/or the other gods instead of worshiping God (Yahweh) as the “most high”, and Jesus (Yeshua) as the Presence of Yahweh on the Earth. That’s what it was all about. But we must understand this, too: that fire does not have the same effect on humans that it did on angels; humans are “destroyed” in it:
Matthew 10:28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in gehenna.
This is why the Lake of Fire was called the “second death”, for humans died once in the body, and then once in the soul:
Revelation 21:8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
This does not mean, as so very many pretend these days, an “eternal separation from God”. No, it means that they cease to exist. And this means that the eternal, conscious torment is only for Satan and his angels, and not for humans. Human existences are snuffed out in that Lake of Fire.
And what about the ben `elohiym, the “sons of God” mentioned at the beginning of this article? Hadn’t God decreed that they would “die like men” for their sins in Psalm 82:7? Yet here we are at the end of the story, and we see that their punishment has been considerably increased from his original decree, for they are now to in an ongoing punishment that lasts forever. And further, we see that God and Jesus were executing a plan to rid the world once and for all of such beings as they had become:
1 John 3:8 The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.
John 1:29 The next day he [John the Baptist] saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, theLambofGod, who takes away the sin ofthe world! (Note that this is not the “sins” of the world, but the singular “sin”—that is, the primary thing that has gone wrong in the world, the rebellion of the sons of God and some of the angels.)
Hebrews 2:5 For He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels.
This change in the order of things—this is what was meant by “a new heaven and a new earth”:
Revelation 21:1 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, …. 4 for the old order of things has passed away.” 5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!”
So we have sons of God at the beginning of the story, and we have sons of God being dispatched from the Earth at the end of the story. Oh, and one more thing that’s really cool:
John 1:12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
Matthew 22:30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.
God seems to have been planning on replacing the original sons of God with humans—“the spirits of just men made perfect”:
Hebrews 12:22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, 23 to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, 24 to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.
God was planning to take “just” humans—those who are upright and not corrupt—and to make them “perfect” so that they could live in the heavenly Holy City. Meanwhile, all others would be dispatched to where the unjust go, the Lake of Fire. He would not mar the Holy City with their presence:
Revelation 21:7 He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. 8 But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” … 26 And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. 27 But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. … 22:14 Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city. 15 But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie.
Now, I think that’s pretty cool. I think it’s awesome that God would make a place unlike the Earth—a place where only the righteous are allowed. Indeed, when we think of what ails us now—apart from our own imperfections—it’s not the acts of righteous people that plague us, but those of the unrighteous. And those people won’t be there if they’re still unrighteous at the time they die.
Some people will hate this, though, for they belong to churches who have corrupted this message into one in which anybody who comes to church—or who gets baptized—or who says the “Sinner’s Prayer”—is granted eternal life. And some even teach that everybody on the planet is granted eternal life. All such departures are quite flagrant and certainly irresponsible, yet that’s the way lots of people choose to behave with the scriptures—to their own peril.
So there’s a sampling of some facts from scripture that will probably surprise some folks. Ironically, so many “Christians” have so misinterpreted the Bible that they have turned God into some sort of monster to be dreaded. As a result, many have heard these erroneous reports of God and have judged him accordingly, deciding they want nothing to do with such a being.
This is why facts are superior to rumors and hearsay. When it comes to knowledge about God, the same carelessness that’s going on now has been going on a long time. Here’s a quote from Mark Twain, showing that this is nothing new:
In religion and politics, people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue, but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
~Mark Twain
In revised edition, chapter 78, p. 401, The Autobiography of Mark Twain, 1959, Charles Neider, Harper & Row.
This is certainly true about God’s reputation—even among those who claim to like him best. I am fully convinced that a great many such people—if they were both honest and informed about the scriptures—would decide that they hate God. And similarly, many who have rejected him on the basis of the examples of ignorant and hypocritical believers may well come to like God if they knew the facts of the scriptures.
This all makes me glad that God is the judge of mankind, and not humans. It will be fascinating to discover more and more about him.
Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Genesis 4:6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you may rule over it.”
