A BIG Question

How can I respect a God who would consign people to a hellfire to be tortured forever?

This is not what the Bible teaches, even though most of Christianity does.  Something to be understood about Christianity is discussed at Matthew 24:5. As the centuries old King James Version states it, “For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.”    Luke 13:24-27: “²⁴Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able. ²⁵When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open for us,' and He will answer and say to you, "I do not know you, where you are from,' ²⁶then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.' ²⁷But He will say, ‘I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.'” Just because people claim to be preaching and teaching from the Bible doesn’t mean that they are.  

It is beyond the scope of this work to explain this further here, but suffice it to say that the Bible is clear that God’s will is that nobody perishes.  There is a “hellfire”, but it is not a place; it is a condition that will come on the earth as the planet is destroyed.  The Bible tells us that God will save the people, but burn up their works. 

How Can I Respect a Vengeful God?

In the past several essays in this series, I've addressed many questions about God and his relations with mankind. Some people have the concern about the God of the Old Testatment and it might be expressed as follows:

The God of the Bible is a vengeful God.  The Old Testament is full of death and destruction.  How can I respect such a God?

            The God of the Old Testament became Y’shuah (Jesus).   I Corinthians 10:4b, speaking of the Israelites described in the Old Testament, says that they “drank from the spiritual rock that went with them, and that rock was Christ.”  Don’t think that God is different from Christ.  Y’shuah taught that God the Father was not revealed before he came.  Speaking of the father, Y’shuah says in John 5:37: “You have never heard his voice, and you have never seen his form.”  What we see in the Old Testament is the God who became human in the person of Yeshua-ben-Yosef of Nazareth.  What we see revealed in him is the God of the Old Testament, and he is always the same (Hb. 13:8).  This means that we must interpret what we see in the Old Testament in light of what we know of the character of Christ.  We do not see in him a man given to whim, but a totally loving and self-sacrificing God who makes decisions seriously and out of love.  He is not just a God of love, but a God of holiness.  There are things he will not abide because of the great damage they cause.   Yes, there were people destroyed enmasse in the Old Testament, but archaeology has demonstrated that in the Canaanites we have people who engaged in cruelty that would send shivers through most people sensitive to right and wrong.  We are talking about people who, in terrible ways, afflicted the weak and defenseless, and there comes a time when the way to stop the spread of evil is to destroy it.  We must not forget also that the end of their lives is not the end of them.  One day God will deal with them in a society of his making rather than their own, and they will have a chance to learn about love.  Anyway, God who made life owns it and can take what is his anytime he pleases.