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In his
book What the Bible Actually Teaches,
John Odhner, who is a follower of spiritist Emanuel Swedenborg, states: ‘If
the Lord is always merciful to everyone, then He can never be angry and
vengeful. In God Himself there is "no variation nor
shadow of turning." (James 1:17)
…. What has seemed to mankind to be evidence of God's anger, then, has
usually been not from God at all, but from the cruel influence of hell …..
Therefore, hell is the source of the trouble which God unwillingly tolerates
for the sake of our freedom. Yet because we suppose God is the source, the
Bible speaks as if God were the one who is angry.’ References from
Swedenborg: Brief Exposition 60-63, The Secrets of Heaven 588, 1093, 2447.
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The God of
whom the Bible speaks is not only a merciful and loving God, but also a God
who is angry with those who break His commandments, as it is written: “God is
angry with the wicked every day” (Psalm 7:11 – NKJV). His anger is a real
anger and not a seeming one. Hear what the Psalmist says: “Yet they [the
Israelites] tested and provoked the Most High God, and did not keep His
testimonies. But turned back and acted unfaithfully like their fathers; they
were turned aside like a deceitful bow. For they provoked Him to anger with
their high places, and moved Him to jealousy with their carved images. When God
heard this, He was furious, and greatly abhorred Israel, so that
He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh,
the tent He had placed among men, and delivered His strength into captivity,
and His glory into the enemy’s hand. He also gave His people over to the
sword, and was furious with His inheritance. The fire consumed their young
men, and their maidens were not given in marriage. Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows made no lamentation” (Psalm
78:56-64 – NKJV). As you can see, when God saw that the Israelites, after
they had entered the promised land, acted unfaithfully like their fathers He
was really angry with them and punished them severely.
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The God of
whom the Bible speaks is also an avenging God, as it is written: “The Lord is
a jealous and avenging God; the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath”
(Nahum 1:2 – NIV). Hear now what God said against Babylon (whose army burned
the house of God and the houses of the inhabitants of Jerusalem with fire,
broke down the walls of Jerusalem, and killed many Jews and carried away
captive to Babylon the remnant of the people who remained in the city and
those who had gone over to the captain of the Babylonian guard) through the
prophet Jeremiah: “Behold, I will plead thy cause [God is speaking to
Jerusalem], and take vengeance for thee; and I will dry up her sea, and make
her springs dry. And Babylon
shall become heaps, a dwellingplace for dragons, an
astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant. They shall roar
together like lions: they shall yell as lion's whelps. In their heat I will
make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and
sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the LORD. I will bring them down
like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with he goats. How is Sheshach taken! and how is the praise of the whole earth surprised! how is Babylon
become an astonishment among the nations! The sea is come up upon Babylon: she is
covered with the multitude of the waves thereof. Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a land wherein
no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass thereby. And I will punish
Bel in Babylon,
and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed up: and
the nations shall not flow together any more unto him: yea, the wall of Babylon shall
fall. My people, go ye out of the midst of her, and deliver ye every man his
soul from the fierce anger of the LORD. And lest your heart faint, and ye
fear for the rumour that shall be heard in the land; a rumour shall both come
one year, and after that in another year shall come a rumour, and violence in
the land, ruler against ruler. Therefore, behold, the days come, that I will
do judgment upon the graven images of Babylon: and her
whole land shall be confounded, and all her slain shall fall in the midst of
her. Then the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, shall sing for Babylon: for the
spoilers shall come unto her from the north, saith the LORD. As Babylon hath
caused the slain of Israel
to fall, so at Babylon
shall fall the slain of all the earth. Ye that have escaped the sword, go
away, stand not still: remember the LORD afar off, and let Jerusalem come into
your mind. We are confounded, because we have heard reproach: shame hath
covered our faces: for strangers are come into the sanctuaries of the LORD's
house. Wherefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will do
judgment upon her graven images: and through all her land the wounded shall
groan. Though Babylon
should mount up to heaven, and though she should fortify the height of her
strength, yet from me shall spoilers come unto her, saith the LORD. A sound
of a cry cometh from Babylon, and great destruction from the land of the
Chaldeans: Because the LORD hath spoiled Babylon, and destroyed out of her
the great voice; when her waves do roar like great waters, a noise of their
voice is uttered: Because the spoiler is come upon her, even upon Babylon,
and her mighty men are taken, every one of their bows is broken: for the LORD
God of recompences shall surely requite. And I will make drunk her princes, and
her wise men, her captains, and her rulers, and her mighty men: and they
shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the King, whose name is
the LORD of hosts. Thus saith the LORD of hosts; The broad walls of Babylon shall be
utterly broken, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; and the people
shall labour in vain, and the folk in the fire, and they shall be weary.”
(Jeremiah 51:36-58). What God said through the prophet Jeremiah against Babylon was
fulfilled in 536 before Christ. Know this, brothers, therefore, that God
takes vengeance on his adversaries for He is just.
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