A remark that I overheard recently, and one that drives me nuts, is that the nature of God changes through the Bible. More specifically, many amateur religious scholars have noted with pride that the God of the Old Testament is an angry God, while the God of the New Testament is a loving God. This remark is off base, and is usually made by people who have only read Cliff's notes on the Bible.
In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, the oldest of the OT, God creates the whole world and wipes it out with a flood and then recreates it again. OK, I can see a little anger there. But he saves Noah-- who was the only righteous one left--and his family, and every species of animal. Then He chose Abraham and promised to bless the entire world through Abraham's ancestors. God used Jacob even though he was a liar, and Joseph even though he was a spoiled brat and nobody liked him.
In Revelation, the last book of the Bible (in the New Testament), God promises to destroy the whole world with fire and then recreate it again. I can see a little anger there. He promises to save those whose names are written in the Book of Life. And whose names are in the Book of Life? The good people? The charitable? The ones who have done enough good things to earn a reward? No, no, no. Most of those people will not find their names in that book. Instead, He picks people like Jacob, who were liars but believed in Jesus. He picks people like Joseph; people nobody likes for good reason but who will give themselves up to the will of God. He picks people like Abraham, whom He called righteous. Was it because of his goodness that Abraham was righteous? No. “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (James 2).
After Genesis, after the blood of an unblemished lamb was placed on the doorpost of every Hebrew home to keep Abaddon--the Destroyer--from killing the eldest sons, the Israelites are ordered by God to start wiping out the godless Canaanite nations. This sounds extremely angry. But this is only a picture of what the godless will go through in hell. And it will not just be the Sodomites (Genesis; Jude 7) who will burn for eternity. The good, moral people, who have done good works and are sure that they have earned their way into heaven will burn for eternity, too. Jesus tells us this over and over again in the parables. Everyone knows that the Pharisees were bad guys, right? But they were not bad because of their actions (at least not until they asked Rome
