Angry OT God is Loving?

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A prayer group I participate in raised this question today, which to me is about the personality of the God of the OT vs that of the God of the NT. Any help is appreciated! :
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So yesterday I received an email from someone who rides on the train with me. It seems a co worker was attacking her on Facebook because she posted !st Corintians 13 on her status. Here is the strange part. He attacked her with scripture Joshua 6:21 Deuteronimy 7, and Joshua 10 : 40-41, saying God committed Mass murder because he became angry. How can God be a loving God if he wipes everyone out when he gets angry? She wanted to answer in a loving way and was stumped (Frankly I was a little too). So she asked me " How do you answer this without getting into an argument? I told her I would pray on it and ask my friends. Any Answers???*
 
mkellogg said:
A prayer group I participate in raised this question today, which to me is about the personality of the God of the OT vs that of the God of the NT. Any help is appreciated! :
*
So yesterday I received an email from someone who rides on the train with me. It seems a co worker was attacking her on Facebook because she posted !st Corintians 13 on her status. Here is the strange part. He attacked her with scripture Joshua 6:21 Deuteronimy 7, and Joshua 10 : 40-41, saying God committed Mass murder because he became angry. How can God be a loving God if he wipes everyone out when he gets angry? She wanted to answer in a loving way and was stumped (Frankly I was a little too). So she asked me " How do you answer this without getting into an argument? I told her I would pray on it and ask my friends. Any Answers???*
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A few suggestions, remembering that we are not to “make God the same as us…”
Still even in the OT, there are examples of God turning away from His anger,
“repenting” of His anger and allowing His mercy to shine forth …

These lessons are given to show us that even we can affect God in His plans.

Exodus 32: 11-12 God abandons His anger after Moses prays to Him.
Hosea 14: 5 “I will love them freely; for my wrath is turned away from them.”
Psalms 78: 38 " But God is merciful and forgave their sin; he did not utterly destroy them.
Time and again he turned back his anger, unwilling to unleash all his rage."

All such show us that God’s mercy overpowers His justice,
esp when people repent and appeal to Him for His loving care.
Because God is love, we can approach Him as a loving Creator.

In our NT days, Jesus has borne the burden
of our repentance to the ultimate and eternal degree.
 
Great Adventure through the Bible with Jeff Cavins- I remember him saying that in Genesis becuase the people of Esau abandoned God that they would be punished.
So when the Isrealites returned from Egypt they had to be wiped out lest their pagan practices continued. Guess what- the Isrealites did’nt eradicate all those people as God had instructed- then the remainder influenced them-got the Isrealites to have household idols- burn their children in the hands of molek-huge sculpture with outheld hands that you sacrificed your children by fire- cool huh?
 
rdscheirer said:
Great Adventure through the Bible with Jeff Cavins- I remember him saying that in Genesis becuase the people of Esau abandoned God that they would be punished.
So when the Isrealites returned from Egypt they had to be wiped out lest their pagan practices continued. Guess what- the Isrealites did’nt eradicate all those people as God had instructed- then the remainder influenced them-got the Isrealites to have household idols- burn their children in the hands of molek-huge sculpture with outheld hands that you sacrificed your children by fire- cool huh?
Click to expand...
Cool?
 
Cool huh?
Guess what abortion is - guess what went on in that abortion mill in Philadelphia- guess what goes on in every abortion mill in this country- they imolate their children on the outstreched hands of “molok”.
 
rdscheirer said:
Cool huh?
Guess what abortion is - guess what went on in that abortion mill in Philadelphia- guess what goes on in every abortion mill in this country- they imolate their children on the outstreched hands of “molok”.
Click to expand...
I’ve been working in the pro-life movement for 40+ yrs.
Still I didn’t “get” your reference.
 
The first thing we have to acknowledge, if we are to have a correct perspective on this, is that God is all-good, all-merciful, all-just all-seeing and all-knowing. His ways are not our ways, nor our our thoughts His thoughts. We are not remotely capable of taking into account every last circumstance, every last contingency, and every last consequence like God can (and does). He works everything for the best, whether we can see it or not (and we usually can’t). Secondly, we must acknowledge God’s sovereign rights over His creation. God has the right to take life, liberty, or property. Even the pagans understood this. The Romans had a saying: Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi: what Jove may do, a cow may not do. God is not bound by the limitations under which we labor; He has rights that we, His creatures do not have, and when He exercises those rights, it is not for us to judge Him.

Thirdly, if you look closely at the Old Testament accounts of God’s vengeance, you will notice a few things. First, the vengeance comes after repeated warnings and falls only after His people have proven themselves obstinate in the face of those warnings. Second, repentance makes God relent. Third, He tells us over and over again how to avoid judgment.

It is important to remember that we cannot expect to be able to go on sinning without consequences. It is precisely God’s compassion and mercy that move Him to warn us, over and over and over again, to turn back to the right path. And if we despise these warnings, we have nobody but ourselves to blame for what will follow.
 
I am not able to quote you chapter and verse but I know it is in the Old Tesestament about how they would immolate their firstborn to “Molek” as the other peoples in the area which God told the Isrealites to get rid of lest they pollute the Isrealites. Guess what- The Isrealites didn’t rid themselves of the pagans so that they continued to have influence.

i
 
The Prophets in the OT who did horrors were not perfect we have to remember that. Sometimes the Bible reports where God punished them. Jesus also called them mercenaries who don’t care about the sheep as their true shepherd does.

Many things in Deuteronomy were not directly from God. Because Israelites had distanced themselves from God, God had done the same and asked Moses and Joshua to deal with them. Some laws are human directives from Moses, not divine Law, which is why Jesus removed them.

If you are talking about natural like disasters. We still have them. Sometimes we wonder why the Tsunamis, earthquakes, floods. We even have unnatural disasters like wars, genocides, terrorism. We were warned about them by Christ, and in Revelation. So it is the same God.

The way I look at it is like: If I don’t clean up my house, spiders will enters and perhaps bites me. I can blame God if I want, but, I may want to thank God for teaching me virtue by the painful bites of spider. At least even if I die, I will die in knowledge of my sin and with a chance of repentance.

The best perspective to put all horrors is the love of God. The simple message is: Hell is infinitively worse, it better to die without our eyes or our arm, that to go to Hell with them.

God bless
 
My perspective is extra-biblical. I think the Jews came from northern India in groups that were a combination of familial and skill-specialized affinity groups. Some kept monotheism, which I see as rooted in all history, although the Aryan invasion brought anti-God tenets adhered to by some “Jewish” groups. These groups all left northern India after earthquakes and Aryan marauders, and settled in the Middle East and some were actively anti-God and some were not. The city of the Kaldees/Ur of the Chaldees is an Indian reference, the center of the bad guys. The monotheist remnant via Abraham and Sarah (Brahma & Sarasvati in India) were displaced by the anti-God sects, something right out of the Arya/Aryan play book.

And I believe God was returning land to His Chosen People, not divesting land from unworthy people. These are the anti-God types who “threw down landmarks” i.e. took land that was not theirs. And Abraham bought the twin caves of Machpelah to bury Sarah. Abraham was told he could have the caves as he was a prince among the people, in other words, was of the genetic milieu. But Abraham distanced himself from mere genetic bonds by insisting that he be allowed to buy the twin caves, identified as the place where Adam’s remains were buried after being taken out of Egypt by Shem, Noah’s son; moved to the cave under Golgotha; and later interred at Machpelah.

One conquest had God demanding the total eradication of one group, and this was not done. In the Book of Esther, it is this group that brings forth Haman, who is out to destroy every Hebrew, something reversed only at Queen Esther’s intercession. So it was in the Flood, with violence and rapine being universal, and one family only that had not polluted their lineage, Noah’s family. I see it as God flushing out the Petri dish when the bad guys threatened to overwhelm and consume the good guys. I’m not sure if people were cross-breeding with Neandertal’s, but I do note that Neandertals were once short and squat and suddenly took on a taller, more gracile form. Only Noah had not contaminated his generation and this group was spared. Better than having life on earth a living nightmare.

Jesus notes that now weed and wheat are intermixed, and to uproot weeds would threaten the wheat. God’s final isolation of evil will be at the Final Judgment.
 
Believe it or not, the punishments of the New Testament are much more severe. To understand this we must look at things from, God’s perspective rather than humanity’s perspective. We need to approach this question eternally, rather than temporally. In all of the Old Testament, every punishment meted out was, at worst, death. In the New Testament, punishments are eternal damnation. Which is worse. Even in the case of the Flood narrative, all were killed, save Noah and his family. In the Apocalypse those who "do not find favor in the sight of the Lord find themselves not drowning in a deluge of water, but in an eternal Lake of Fire. From this perspective, it is very hard to paint the “Old Testament God” as “wrathful” and the “New Testament God” as “loving.” To start down this path is the first step in the journey towards Gnosticism, which continually keeps popping up time and time again.
 
Romans 9:19-24 He actually compares us to as if just pottery,so you could argue what relevance are physical or life span has over his/our spirit.We are cloaked with Jesus so such is his view.
 
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