The Fiery Wrath of God

                              Judges 20:48 KJB

All of the tribes of Israel went to war with the tribe of Benjamin because a group of evil men in that tribe had raped and murdered two women, and the rulers of the tribe of Benjamin refused to deliver up the men for judgment who had committed this terrible crime. Judges 20:12-13 (KJB). In addition, the husband of one of the women had cut her dead body into twelve pieces and had sent those pieces to the twelve tribes. All of this darkness and evil caused by the Devil brought a kind of madness to all the people of Israel who responded by going to a civil war with the people of Benjamin. Judges 20:1-17 (KJB). Sometimes in the history of humanity, the Devil becomes able to inflict a terrible, dark evil on the minds of large numbers of people, and he will cause them to afflict each other with cruel crimes. This often happens in revolutions and in such events as the Salem witch trials. Stories of dark crimes, such as cutting a woman into twelve pieces, often makes the madness much worse. Hitler's lies about awful crimes that the Jews did not commit made the madness of the Nazi revolution much worse. These types of insane events cannot seem to stop until some people come to their senses and ask the question, "What are we doing?" 

Just as people who are addicted to certain sins must hit rock bottom before they realize that they must either die or get right with God, so when insanity grips large numbers of people, then they must do their worst to each other before some of them begin to come to their senses. God knows this, and so He allowed these armies to defeat each other in several battles until only 600 men were left of the tribe of Benjamin. Judges 20:14-47 (KJB). God also allowed the armies of Israel to burn the cities of Benjamin because God knows that His fiery wrath purges evil, and when evil is purged, then humans caught in madness will begin to return to their senses. Judges 20:48 (KJB). 

The armies of Israel began to return to their senses when they realized that they were on the verge of the extermination of the tribe of Benjamin. To remedy that condition, they concocted various ways to supply the 600 men of Benjamin who were trapped in the rock of Rimmon with wives so that they could multiply and save the tribe of Benjamin from genocide. Judges 21:1-25 (KJB). 

All of sin and evil is a type of madness, but in the end of the world, Christ will visit all of His living humans on the earth and confined to the regions of death, and He will cause them all to return to the sanity of faith in Him as their Savior so that He can use His fiery wrath against evil to purge all sin and evil from every one of them in order to save them from extermination by the Devil. Christ will then recreate their repentant, living souls and spirits with new bodies to live forever on His recreated earth, and He will cast their dead and evil natures into the eternal lake of fire. Revelation 5:11-14; II Peter 3:9-13; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5; Revelation 20:11-15; Revelation 22:11-12; Matthew 13:36-43; I Corinthians 3:11-15; John 5:28-29 (KJB).  

The Fiery Wrath of God

           Judges 14:15 Judges 15:4-5 Judges 15:6 (KJB)

Evil people will use any cruel method that they see fit to get what they want. They have no qualms about inflicting pain on innocent people. God's enemies threatened to burn Samson's wife's and her father's house just so they could win a bet with Samson.

When Samson's wife's father took her away from Samson and gave her to one of his companions, Samson was grieved, and he decided to take revenge on the Philistines because he knew that his enemies had  induced  his wife's father to take her away from him. So, Samson caught 300 foxes and attached firebrands to their tails, and he turned them loose into the wheat fields and vineyards of the Philistines and burnt them. Although Samson had decided to do this on his own, God allowed him to do it because God, being Holy, has every right to use His fiery wrath to punish evildoers for their evil deeds. God often uses the same methods that evildoers use, but He does that for righteous purposes. 

When the Philistines heard that Samson had burnt their fields, they were evidently afraid to directly confront Samson. So, they burned Samson's wife's and father's house with them in it and murdered them even though they had enticed her father to take her away from Samson. When Samson heard of this very cruel and evil deed, he began to kill the Philistines by the thousands. But God was working through the mighty strength of Samson to kill His, and His people's enemies.

Just like Samson burnt the fields of the Philistines, in the end of the world, God will burn His entire creation to purge it of all evil and the Devil, and He will recreate it all, including all of His living humans that He created in His image, to be righteous. II Peter 3:9-13; Revelation 21:1-5; Luke 20:38 (KJB). Since God is "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance," then God will make sure that all of His living humans will come to repentance because His Will cannot be thwarted. II Peter 3:9; I Timothy 2:4; I Corinthians 3:11-15; I Corinthians 4:5; II Timothy 4:1; Revelation 5:11-14. (KJB). 

The Fiery Wrath of God

                                Judges 12:1 KJB

Jephthah was the son of a harlot and when his father's sons were grown, they cast Jephthah out of their family, and he became an outcast. He had no way to feed himself, and so he formed a band of outlaws that lived by force. Apparently, he gained a reputation as a good leader and a good fighter with a sword. Jephthah's father's name was Gilead, and apparently, that family had become so prominent in that region that the people of that land called themselves Gileadites. Judges 11:1-3 (KJB). 

The Gileadites heard that the Ammonites had formed an army to make war against Israel. The elders of Gilead realized that they needed a good leader and fighter to form an army to fight against Ammon. So, they went to Jephthah who lived in a land called Tob, and they asked him to come and be their leader and form an army to fight against Ammon. Jephthah asked them why they wanted him to be their leader since they had cast him out of their land. The elders replied that the needed him. So, Jephthah forgave his people, and he agreed to come to them, and be their leader in their fight with Ammon. Jephthah had every reason to hate his people and refuse to be their leader, and yet he forgave them and agreed to their request. Even though he had been an outcast and an outlaw, Jephthah forgave his people because he believed in God. God had control of Jephthah's heart. Judges 11:4-11 (KJB). 

Jephthah desired to make peace with Ammon. Ammon claimed that they wanted to take back the land that Israel had taken from them. Jephthah wrote letters to the king of Ammon, and he explained to him that while the Israelites had taken any land that God had told them to take, they had not taken any land from Ammon. Besides that, Jephthah wrote, the Israelites had lived in the land that Ammon claimed for 300 years which certainly would make it their land. The king of Ammon probably knew that Jephthah's history was correct, but he rejected Jephthah's peace proposal and went to war because of his greed for the land of Israel. God can use even outlaws if their heart is right with God. God caused Jephthah to be a peacemaker. Matthew 5:9; Judges 11:12-28 (KJB). The Spirit of God came upon Jephthah just before he went to battle with the Ammonites. That probably meant that God had saved Jephthah by His grace. Judges 11:29 (KJB). God gives His salvation by His grace to any person He chooses who has faith in Him. Ephesians 2:8-9 (KJB). 

Jephthah and the Gileadites gained a great victory over the Ammonites because God was with them. Judges 11:32-33 (KJB).

Apparently, the people of Gilead dwelt among the Ephraimites, and they came with an army and threatened to burn down Jephthah's house because they claimed he had not called them to the battle. Jephthah replied that he had called them to the battle, and they had ignored him. The real reason that the Ephraimites wanted to burn Jephthah's house and make war with the Gileadites was that the Gileadites were now a people with their own land, and the Ephraimites desired to take it back under their control. They were also jealous of the victory of the Gileadites over Ammon. The Gileadites then gained a great victory over the Ephraimites in battle. Judges 12:1-7 (KJB). 

This story proves that God uses people who have faith in Him to tell the truth and desire peace, but God will also use His fiery wrath in war against the fiery wrath of evil people who lie and use greed and jealousy to get what they want. 

The Fiery Wrath of God

                               Judges 9:15,20,52 KJB

Sometimes, a group of basically good people will select a murderous criminal to be their leader because they mistake his pretense of being a strong man with his being a wise leader. These evil leaders have a talent for persuasion. They convince the people that they have a certain group of enemies that if they allow the evil ruler to get rid of, then the people will be liberated from their threat, and they will have a better life. Such evil leaders will appoint other evil men to authority in every position in their society to protect themselves from the good people who will sooner or later realize that they are being led by criminals. Too often good people also happen to be naive. The Bible records that an evil man named Abimelech convinced the people of the city of Shechem that he should be their king because the seventy sons of Gideon were their enemies. The people gave him money which he used to hire other evil men to follow him. He and his evil followers then murdered seventy of Gideon's sons who were actually his own half- brothers.  Judges 9:1-6 (KJB).

But one of the sons of Gideon named Jotham escaped from this slaughter and from a safe distance he shouted out a prophetic parable to the people of Shechem. Jotham related that the trees, which symbolized a society, asked two fruit bearing trees and a grape vine to be their kings. Being bearers of fruit, they symbolized good people, but they all refrained from being leaders because they just wanted to tend to their own business. Too often, good people reject being leaders because politics can be an ugly business. Jotham further related that then the trees asked a worthless bramble, which symbolized Abimelech, to be their king. The bramble replied that he would be their king if they would "trust in my shadow" which meant he would provide no real protection for them. But if they made him king, and then rejected him, he would burn them with fire which meant he would slaughter as many of them as needed in order to stay in power. Judges 9:7-21 (KJB). God sometimes uses His fiery wrath to temporarily kill evil people, and even good people who serve them, but, in the end of the world, He will cause all of their good natures to repent and return to faith in Him as their Savior because He created them all in His image, and they all belong to Him. Genesis 1:26-27; Genesis 1:31; Revelation 5:11-14 (KJB). But the Devil also has his fiery wrath which he uses to kill good people in the hope that they will remain dead for eternity. But God can never lose anything He has ever created. Genesis 2:17; Romans 7:23-25; Ecclesiastes 3:14 (KJB). 

Jotham reminded the people of Shechem that his father, Gideon, had liberated them from the tyranny of the Midianites, and therefore, his sons should have been their leaders, but they allowed Abimelech to kill them all except for him. Jotham then sarcastically appealed to their conscience when he told them that if they had been right in making Abimelech their king, they should rejoice over it. Jotham then made a prophecy which is universally true. He prophesied that evil leaders will often raise up followers who will fight will each other for dominance in their societies. This is an evil fire that comes from the Devil. Jotham's prophecy came true because Abimelech had to go to war with other evil leaders who desired to take his place. Abimelech used the fire of the Devil to kill a lot of people. Finally, Abimelech used fire to burn the door of a tower that held some of his enemies, but a woman threw down a millstone that mortally wounded Abimelech. He knew he was dying but being too proud to have been killed by a woman, he ordered his amourbearer to finish him off with his sword. God sometimes gets tired of the fire of the Devil, and God will use other means to kill evil people, sometimes in ways that humiliate them. Judges 9:22-57 (KJB). 

The Fiery Wrath of God

                                Judges 6:21 KJB

From time to time in the history of mankind whenever the people of God became few in number, and the darkness of evil became predominant, and the light of God's Word seemed to be on the verge of being put out for good, then God moved among His faithful people, and He caused them to rise up and fight against evil and win great victories even though greatly outnumbered. Noah and his family fought against evil by obeying God and building an Ark that saved them from the great flood that God used to destroy all evil people from the world. Genesis 6:8-14 (KJB). In the days of Elijah when God's people were few, and a man named Obadiah, who had kept his faith in God a secret, hid a hundred prophets in a cave to keep the evil king Ahab and his evil queen Jezebel from killing them, God raised up His prophet Elijah who gained a great victory over evil and caused a renewal of faith among God's people. I Kings 18:1-41 (KJB). When a small number of God's people returned to Jerusalem from their captivity in Babylon, they won a great victory over evil. Most of God's people remained in Babylon and lost their faith. Ezra 1:1-5 (KJB). 

In almost every example of when God saved a small number of His people from extinction by evil, He either had them to make a burnt offering or He made one Himself. God commanded Noah to make a burnt offering sacrifice after the great flood. Genesis 8:20-21 (KJB). God sent fire from Heaven to burn the sacrifice that Elijah had made to turn God's people back to faith in Him. I Kings 18:30-41 (KJB). When a small number of God's people returned to Jerusalem from their captivity in Babylon where they may have turned to other gods and been lost from God's protection forever, the priests built an altar and made many burnt sacrifices. Ezra 3:1-3 (KJB). King Hezekiah started a great revival among God's people in Jerusalem, and he had the priests to make many sin offerings and burnt offerings to the Lord. II Chronicles 29:20-36 (KJB). Shortly thereafter, the king of Assyria invaded with a mighty army and conquered most of Judah, and he trapped a small number of God's people in Jerusalem where he threatened to extinguish God's people and faith in God forever from the earth. But the prophet Isaiah and king Hezekiah and the people remained faithful, and God sent an angel to utterly destroy that evil army. II Chronicles 32:21 (KJB). In the time of the Judges, when most of God's people had begun to worship false gods, God allowed the Midianites to dominate the Israelites and impoverish them, and God's faithful people were few in number. Then an angel, who was actually the Lord Himself, appeared to a man named Gideon and called him to lead God's people in revolt. Judges 6:1-17 (KJB). Gideon then killed a kid and made unleavened bread and a broth, and he brought them to the Lord. The Lord commanded Gideon to put the kid and the unleavened cakes on a rock and pour the broth on them. The Lord then touched this offering with His staff, and a fire rose up and consumed this offering. This was a burnt offering. Judges 6:18-24 (KJB). God then had Gideon to lead an army of only 300 men to defeat a vast multitude of the Midianites. Judges 7:16-25 (KJB). 

All of this can only mean that the sin offering, and the burnt offering, had great, but different, symbolic meanings for God's salvation of His people. God gave the sin offering to Adam and Eve and the Israelites to symbolize that God's Messiah would shed His blood to save some of God's people by His grace. Genesis 3:20-21 (KJB). But God gave the burnt offering to Noah and the Israelites for a different reason. God told Noah, and all who read the Bible, that the next time He destroys evil from the earth, He will use His fiery wrath, but He will utterly destroy only evil itself, and He will recreate all of His creation, including all living humans, whom He creates in His image, to be righteous. Genesis 1:26-27; II Peter 3:9-13 (KJB). God made Eve the mother of all living humans which can only mean that they all belong to Him which makes them all His people no matter how evil they may become. Luke 20:38; Psalm 82:6; John 10:34-35; Genesis 3:20 (KJB). In the end of the world, the Messiah will appear to all of His living humans, whom He did not save by His grace, and He will cause them all to repent and return to faith in Him as their Savior so that He can use His fiery wrath to dissolve their beings to separate their living natures for Him to recreate from their dead and evil natures that He will cast into the lake of fire. Revelation 5:11-14; Revelation 20:11-15; Matthew 13:36-43; I Corinthians 3:11-15; John 5:28-29; Psalm 75:3; Psalm 36:6 (KJB). God made this promise to Noah and to all of humanity that when He burns the earth, He will never "again smite;" that is, permanently kill any of His living humans that He creates and loves. Genesis 8:20-21 (KJB). God can never lose anything He has ever created. It all comes back to Him to be cleansed and recreated. Romans 11:36 (KJB). God promised in Revelation 21:5, "Behold, I make all things new." That can only mean that He will thoroughly purge all evil from His entire creation so that He can recreate it all to be righteous, including all of His living humans whom He will return to faith in Him. Habakkuk 2:4; Romans 8:18-25; Colossians 1:15-23; I Corinthians 15:20-26; John 5:28-29; II Peter 3:9-13; I Timothy 4:10 (KJB).  

 

The Fiery Wrath of God

                               Joshua 13:14 KJB

God uses His fiery wrath to destroy evil, but He also uses His fiery wrath to cleanse the souls and spirits of humans from all sins and evil so that He can save their living natures from being forever destroyed by the Devil. God creates the souls and spirits of all humans in His image. He creates them to be living and good, and God can never lose anything He has ever created to the Devil. Genesis 1:26-27; Genesis 1:31; Ecclesiastes 3:14; Luke 20:38 (KJB). God gave the sin offering to Adam and Eve, which was the blood sacrifice of an animal, to symbolize that the coming Savior would be able to use His shed blood to cleanse the souls and spirits of all humans of all their sins and evil who would put their faith in Him while still alive in the flesh. Genesis 3:20-21; Matthew 26:28 (KJB). But God gave the burnt offering of animals to Noah after the flood, and God determined in His heart that He would remove the curse of the ground so that He could raise all of His repentant, living humans from the regions of death. Genesis 3:17 (KJB). God also understood that all humans have an evil nature injected into them by the Devil, but God also determined that He would never again permanently kill any of His living humans that He creates and loves as He had done with the flood. Genesis 2:17; Genesis 3:15; Genesis 6:5-7 (KJB). All of this means that the burnt offering had to symbolize that God will use His fiery wrath against evil to purge all of His living humans who do not become saved by His grace of all their sins and evil when He returns them to faith in Him as their Savior. Revelation 5:11-14; II Peter 3:9-13; Matthew 13:36-43; I Corinthians 3:11-15; Psalm 75:3 (KJB). Christ will even go and preach to those living humans whom He killed in the flood so that He can save them. I Peter 3:19-20 (KJB). Christ will resurrect and recreate all of His repentant, living humans to an eternal life on His recreated earth. Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5; John 5:28-29 (KJB). 

In His eternal nature, God knows absolutely everything that can be known, but as He passes through time with the history of the human race, He learns what it means to be human. Acts 15:18; Luke 2:52 (KJB). Jesus learned what it means to be human. Hebrews 4:15 (KJB). 

God also gave the sin offering and the burnt offering to the Israelites. God gave an inheritance of parts of the promised land to the various tribes of Israel, but God gave only the inheritance of the burnt offering sacrifice to the Levites. Joshua 13:14 (KJB). The Levites, some of whom were the priests, symbolized the soul and spirit of the nation of Israel. At times, God allowed the Levites to eat part of the roasted meat that became the burnt offering, and He also allowed them to eat part of the meat offering when it became the burnt offering. Leviticus 6:14-18; Exodus 29:31-32 (KJB). This symbolized that those who partake of the Spirit of Christ by faith will receive either salvation by grace, or they will receive a lesser form of salvation accomplished by the burnt offering sacrifice made by the Spirit of Christ when He descended into a burning Hell. John 6:33; John 6:51; Psalm 16:9-11; Acts 2:25-31; Revelation 5:11-14 (KJB) In the end of the world, Christ will appear to all of His living humans "on the earth, and under the earth," and He will cause all of their souls and spirits to partake of His Spirit by faith so that He can use His fiery wrath against evil to purge them of all sins, evil, and spiritual death so that He can recreate them with new bodies to live forever on His recreated earth. Revelation 5:11-14; Philippians 2:9-11; II Peter 3:9-13; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5 (KJB). The Levites symbolized the souls and spirits of humans, and the other tribes of Israel symbolized the recreated bodies of all living humans who will inherit a new life on God's recreated earth.  

The Fiery Wrath of God

                                Joshua 8:8,19 KJB

When the Israelite army had conquered AI, God had them to burn the city and kill every man, woman, and child in it. God allowed them to keep the cattle as a spoil because they were wholly innocent. But the people of AI were totally given to the practice of evil. For over 400 years, while the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, the Canaanites had practiced idolatry and child sacrifice. God is longsuffering and merciful, but when His patience becomes exhausted, He moves to utterly destroy evil in the earth. Romans 9:22 (KJB). God knows that that which is of utmost importance to the eternal survival of the human race must be the total eradication of all sin, evil, spiritual death, and the Devil from His entire creation so that He can recreate it all to be righteous. II Peter 3:9-13 (KJB). 

The Israelites were a righteous army because they were used by God in righteous ways even though every man in it was a sinner. In this modern age, God has often become fed up with evil and atheistic ideologies, such as fascism and communism, and He has used His righteous armies to kill them and burn their cities. Every man, woman, and child has been burned in some cities in Japan and Germany. Nevertheless, in this Church Age, God has demonstrated His great longsuffering and mercy because He has commanded His Church to preach the gospel of salvation by His grace that He has provided for every human through His death, burial, and resurrection. Matthew 28:18-20; I Corinthians 15:1-4 (KJB). 

But just because God sometimes uses His righteous armies to utterly destroy some evil people, that does not mean that He has given up on His salvation of the good and righteous natures of those evil people that He creates and loves. Genesis 1:26-27; Genesis 1:31 (KJB). God can never lose anything He has ever created, and His Love can never fail. Ecclesiastes 3:14; Psalm 111:7-8; I Corinthians 13:8 (KJB). People become evil and atheistic because they allow the Devil to influence them to suppress their good and living natures that God created them to be. The Devil desires that sin and evil eventually annul the good and living natures of at least some humans so that they will forever be lost from God's Love in a burning Hell. In this way, the Devil hopes to weaken God which would give the Devil a chance to murder Him. John 8:44 (KJB). The Devil took his chance to murder God when the Father allowed all of the sins, evil, and eternal deaths of all humans to be placed on Jesus on the cross so that He could suffer it all in the place of every human, and He could rise from the dead having purged all sins and evil from every living human and having turned their eternal deaths into temporary deaths. Hebrews 2:9-18; I John 2:2; II Timothy 1:10; Luke 20:38; I Timothy 4:10; Revelation 21:1-5 (KJB). God will return every living human to faith in Him as their Savior, some by His grace and all others when Christ visits them in the end of the world. John 5:24; Revelation 5:11-14 (KJB). 

Hebrews 2:10-13 relates that God will save some humans by His grace, but Hebrews 2:14-18 relates that God will also save the rest of humanity with a lesser form of salvation. Taste is a temporary experience. That means that Hebrews 2:9 can only mean that Christ turned the eternal deaths of all humans into only temporary deaths. I John 2:2 relates that Christ satisfied His Father that He paid the sin debt of all living humans, not just those He saved by His grace. II Timothy 1:10 relates that Christ has "abolished death" itself, and since all humans are alive in God's sight, then Christ must have saved all living humans from eternal death. Luke 20:38 (KJB). I Timothy 4:10 relates that Christ exists "as the Savior of all men" which can only mean that He has saved all of His living humans and not that He just desires to save them. How can anyone get around Revelation 21:5 in which God promises "Behold, I make all things new.?" Living humans are a part of the "all things" that God has created. Revelation 4:11 (KJB). God knows exactly how to return every human He has ever created to faith in Him as their Savior of their own free will. Habakkuk 2:4; Romans 1:17 (KJB).