The Fiery Wrath of God

                       II Kings 21:6 KJB

God gives free will to every normal and intelligent human. For this reason, Godly parents can have children who choose to become evil. King Manasseh became an evil tyrant even though he was the son of a Godly father, king Hezekiah. Manasseh chose to worship idols, and he even put some idols into the house of God, the Temple. II Kings 21:1-5 (KJB). 

Some opponents of God claim that they have no desire to serve God because they say that God is overbearing and domineering. But the truth of the matter is that God has given every normal individual free will which means every person can live whatever life they choose to live, whether a good life, a sinful life, or even an evil life. That God is overbearing is a lie from the Devil. The conviction of the Holy Spirit that their sinful lives are wrong makes them blame God for their guilt. Free humans do not realize that no matter what they do, a merciful God is still in control. The good person brings glory to God because they try to obey God and fight against evil. Genesis 1:31 (KJB). Humans saved by grace bring glory to God because they believe that God's Love caused Him to shed His blood on a cross to wash away their sins and give them the righteousness of Christ Himself so that they can live with Him in Heaven forever. John 5:24; Matthew 26:28; I Peter 1:3-5 (KJB). All humans are sinful, but even a sinful person also brings glory to God because when they hear the gospel about how God's Love and compassion can save them from their sins and evil, they come under the conviction that they are sinful and only God is righteous. John 16:7-10 (KJB). But even the evil person ultimately brings glory to God because every time God defeats evil in the history of the world, and when He completely defeats evil in the end of the world, they will play their part in their demonstration that they were evil to prove that God has the power to completely destroy all evil. Romans 9:14-24 (KJB). 

King Manasseh became so evil that "he made his son pass through the fire." II Kings 21:6 (KJB). In our day, humans will sacrifice their own unborn sons and daughters to ensure that they will have a prosperous life. That is the opposite of love and self-sacrifice. God sent a prophet to king Manasseh to warn him that God would severely punish Judah for the evil that it had allowed. Judah would be turned over to its enemies. Yet, the patience and longsuffering of God allowed Manasseh to live to an old age and die a peaceful death. II Kings 21:10-18. God will wait to make His final judgment until the end of the world. 

Christ will make His final judgment of the "quick and the dead" in the end of the world. II Timothy 4:1; John 12:47-48 (KJB). Christ's final judgment of all humans saved by His grace will be that He will exempt them from a final judgment because He has already annulled their spiritual deaths, and He has given them His own righteousness and eternal life with Him. John 5:24; John 6:40 (KJB). Christ will visit all of His living humans "on the earth, and under the earth," and He will cause all of His living and good humans whom He created in His image to repent and return to faith in Him as the Lamb of God their Savior so that He can use His fiery wrath against evil to purge their beings of all sins, evil, and spiritual deaths, and He will recreate them all with new bodies to live forever on His recreated earth. Revelation 5:11-14; Matthew 13:36-43; I Corinthians 3:11-15; II Peter 3:9-13 (KJB). Christ will cast their purged dead and evil natures into the eternal lake of fire. Revelation 20:11-15 (KJB). 

All humans can choose to live however they desire to live, but in the end, Christ will cause their good and living natures to choose to repent for the glory of God, and their separated, sinful and evil natures He will cast into the eternal lake of fire for the glory of God. 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; Romans 11:36; Revelation 4:11; Revelation 21:5; Revelation 22:11-12 (KJB).  

The Fiery Wrath of God

                             II Kings 19:17-18 KJB

The king of Assyria had besieged Jerusalem, and king Hezekiah of Judah, who was a servant of the Lord, prayed fervently that God would deliver Jerusalem. King Sennacherib of Assyria had sent a letter to king Hezekiah in which he bragged that none of the gods of all the nations that he had conquered had been able to save them from his army, and therefore, the God of Hezekiah would not be able to deliver Jerusalem from his army. This letter was a great insult to the power of God. II Kings 19:8-16 (KJB). 

As king Hezekiah prayed, he mentioned that as king Sennacherib had conquered many nations, he had thrown their idol gods into fires and burned them. Evil armies happen to be so greedy and rapacious that they will often fight against each other for wealth and power. God knows that that is a great weakness in the power of evil, and God uses that weakness against the evil powers. Jesus taught that Satan had that weakness in his kingdom. Luke 11:14-23 (KJB). The 9th chapter of Revelation prophesies that an evil army will be released from the bottomless pit under the earth to wage war against an evil army on the earth, and six fallen angels will be released from being bound in the river Euphrates to kill a third part of another evil army by using fire and brimstone. Revelation 9:1-20 (KJB). The fact that the beast who came out of the earth caused the beast out of the sea to live and be able to speak so that the beast out of the earth could control him, could very well indicate that the beast out of the sea had been wounded to death by the beast out of the earth. Revelation 13:1-13 (KJB). 

In our age, the evil Nazi army and the evil communist army conquered Poland and divided it. Then they engaged in a horrific war with each other that saved the lives of millions in the good armies which enabled the good armies to win the war. 

God sent one angel to destroy 185 thousand in the Assyrian army to save Jerusalem, but God had already used king Sennacherib to burn many idols and destroy many pagan peoples. II Kings 20:35; II Kings 19:17-18 (KJB). God knows exactly how to fight fire with fire. He uses His fiery wrath against evil in different ways. God can use the weaknesses in evil forces to accomplish His Will. 

The Fiery Wrath of God

                           II Kings 17:17,31 KJB

By far, the most important outcome for the history of the human race would be for God to defeat Satan and all evil, and He saves His human race from an eternal death which the Devil desires to impose upon every living human. Genesis 2:17 (KJB). The Devil has far more power than any human, which means no human can save themselves from the Devil's eternal death. Romans 7:23-24 (KJB). The Devil has confidence in his power to utterly destroy the human race. The Devil bragged to God that he could go anywhere in the world that he chose to go, and he could do whatever he wanted to do. Job 1:6-7 (KJB). But just as God did not allow the Devil to take the life of Job, so God will not allow the Devil to take the lives of any of His living humans whom He creates in His image. Job 2:6; Genesis 1:26-27 (KJB). God promised that He would send His Messiah, who is Himself, to utterly crush the head of the serpent; that is, the Devil, so that He can purge all evil from His world and save His entire, living human race from eternal death. Genesis 3:15 (KJB). The phrase in this verse, "it shall bruise thy head," means that the Messiah will overwhelm the Devil to the extent that He will win an absolute and complete victory over him. God does not win partial victories. 

God allows the Devil to do his worst to the human race to prove that evil can never put out the light of God's love and faith that He puts into every living human that He creates. Genesis 1:31; John 1:9 (KJB). God chose the Hebrew people to be His chosen people who would write His Word and bring His Messiah into the world. God saved them from slavery in Egypt and gave them His commandments for them to obey so that they could have good lives free from evil. But from time to time, the Hebrews would become influenced by the Devil's power to the extent that they would begin to worship idols, and they would even throw their babies into the fires that were inside of these false gods. II Kings 17:17; II Kings 17:31 (KJB). The Devil knew that God sometimes uses His fiery wrath against evil to destroy evil, so the Devil enjoys mocking God by using his own fiery wrath to destroy the innocence and goodness that God creates. But the Devil cannot permanently destroy anything God creates. The Devil believes that one day his fiery wrath will utterly destroy forever at least some of the goodness and love that God has put into every human. Job 1:7-12 (KJB). God knew that Job was a sinner like every human, but God called him perfect because Job tried very hard to live in accordance with the love and faith that God had put into him when He created him. God can never lose anything He has ever created, and His Love cannot fail. Ecclesiastes 3:14; I Corinthians 13:8 (KJB). 

Humans cannot save themselves, but Christ can. Romans 7:24-25 (KJB). Christ took all of the sins, evil, and spiritual deaths of the entire human race on Himself on the cross so that through His death, burial, and resurrection, He could save the entire human race. I John 2:2 (KJB). Christ will save by His grace all humans who believe in Him while they are still alive in the flesh. John 3:3; John 5:24 (KJB). Christ judged and cast out only the Devil and all evil when He suffered and died on the cross, but He did so to liberate all of His living humans from the Devil's eternal death. John 12:31-32; John 16:11 (KJB). Christ reserved His final judgment of the entire human race until the end of the world. John 12:44-48 (KJB). 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 faith in Him as the Lamb of God their Savior so that He can save them all from eternal death. Revelation 5:11-14 (KJB). Christ has abolished death itself, not any of His living humans. I Timothy 1:10; Luke 20:38 (KJB). Christ will resurrect His Church in the Rapture, and then in the end of the world He will resurrect the rest of the human race back to life, and then He will gain a complete victory over all His enemies, which are the Devil and all evil, and then He will destroy the last enemy which is eternal death itself, not any of His living humans. I Corinthians 15:20-28 (KJB). Christ will save the entire human race with a special salvation for all humans whom He will save by His grace. I Timothy 4:10 (KJB).   

On Purpose and Meaning

The theory of multiple universes contends that if an infinite number of universes exist, then it becomes inevitable that one of those universes would be so fine-tuned that life would evolve and eventually become intelligent and creative life. That universe is our universe. The only purpose of all the other universes would be to ensure that the universe of life would come into being. In addition, the anthropic principle would ensure that our universe, as a whole, would possess the values, meanings, and purposes that intelligent and creative life would attach to it. Also, intelligent life can understand that the purpose of all the other universes was to ensure the existence of the life universe and that all those other universes would have no purpose if they never produced the life universe. In other words, all those other universes could have no purpose unless it became a known purpose to an intelligent consciousness. The only way that all of those other universes could acquire purpose would be if they ensured the existence of intelligent life who would be able to recognize that they had that purpose. So much for the philosophy that the universe and life have no meaning or purpose. 

Nevertheless, those who believe that the universe and life have no meaning adds that value to the universe, whether that belief is true or false. Similarly, those who believe in God add all of His values to the universe whether He exists or not. The point is that creative intelligence, by its very nature, cannot avoid attaching purpose and meaning to everything that it experiences, even if that absolute purpose and meaning is that it has no purpose or meaning. 

All of this means that purpose, meaning, and values cannot be detached from an intelligent and creative consciousness. Our universe happens to be governed by a set of fine-tuned mathematical and physical rules and laws. Such rules and laws could not exist unless an Intelligent Consciousness has a purpose and a meaning for them.  Intelligent finite and creative life could not exist without an extremely complex set of chemical and electrical interactions. Only an Infinite Intelligent Consciousness could have created this intelligent life with a meaning and with a purpose for every individual life. Complex systems that produce creative results cannot exist without meaning and purpose. 

The Fiery Wrath of God

                               II Kings 16:13 KJB

All Christian cults center on the attempt to combine the worship of a false god with the worship of the true and living God. A king of Judah named Ahaz made an alliance with a pagan king of Assyria to help him in his war with Syria and Israel. Ahaz failed to pray to God for help. The king of Assyria won the war for the king of Judah. The king of Judah then went to Damascus to visit the king of Assyria, and he saw there a pagan altar, and he was quite impressed with it. He then sent a message to Urijah the chief priest in Jerusalem and instructed him to make an altar exactly like the one he had seen in Damascus. He also instructed Urijah to move the brazen altar from before the Temple and replace it with this pagan altar. When king Ahaz returned from Damascus, he offered on this pagan altar all of the sin offerings and all of the burnt offerings that God had commanded to be offered on the simple, brazen altar before the Temple. II Kings 16:5-18 (KJB). 

All Christian cults begin with someone who attempts to replace some part of the Word of God with some sort of pagan beliefs. Quite often, they try to reduce Jesus to being someone who is less than God which makes Him no more than any pagan god. The Devil does not care if these cults practice the Lord's supper or baptism if they just keep people from believing that Jesus is God their Savior. The brazen altar before the Temple on which the sin offerings and the burnt offerings were to be made symbolized the cross of Christ where God poured out His blood and water to save some humans by His grace, and He sent His Spirit to Hell when He died to leave behind there all of the sins and evil of the rest of humanity so that He could save them by His mercy. Acts 20:28; Psalm 16:9-11; Acts 2:25-31; Luke 23:46; Luke 3:6; John 5:28-29 (KJB). When the Holy Spirit rose immaculate from the regions of death to reanimate the perfect body of Jesus, He rose from the dead with an absolute and complete victory over all sins, evil, spiritual death, and the Devil. I Peter 3:18; I Timothy 1:10; I Corinthians 15:20-26; I John 3:8; Revelation 1:17-18; I Timothy 4:10 (KJB). Christ, who is Almighty God, cannot fail to save from eternal death all of His living humans whom He creates and loves. Genesis 1:31; Genesis 1:26-27; Genesis 3:20; Luke 20:38 (KJB). Christ "hath put all enemies under His feet." I Corinthians 15:25 (KJB). God's enemies are the Devil and all evil, never any of His living humans whom He loves. I Corinthians 13:8 (KJB).  

The Fiery Wrath of God

                            II Kings 8:12 KJB 

God is patient and longsuffering with evil humans, but when His patience runs out, He will use war and fire to destroy evil humans. Exodus 15:3 (KJB). The Devil also uses fire in his wars against God's people. But the Devil will use fire indiscriminately to kill evil people as well as good ones. The Devil hates the goodness that God puts into every human He creates. Genesis 1:31; Genesis 1:26-27 (KJB). The Devil hates God and anything God creates. 

God revealed to Elisha that a servant of the king of Syria, named Hazael, would become the king of Syria and that he would commit some terrible atrocities against women and children. At first, Hazael did not believe Elisha, but when he returned to Syria, he evidently decided to give in to the evil nature inside of him, and so he murdered the king of Syria and became the king. He then fulfilled the prophecy of Elisha. II Kings 13:3 (KJB). 

Hazael actually also destroyed many evil humans because many of the people of Israel at that time worshipped idols. In all wars, good and evil humans are both destroyed. God allows evil armies to destroy other evil armies because that diminishes evil in the world and that causes less suffering for the human race in the long run. Romans 9:28 (KJB). God also allows good people to be killed in wars to prove that no matter how brutal and cruel the Devil can be, he can never utterly destroy anything that God has created and loves. Ecclesiastes 3:14; I Corinthians 13:8 (KJB). God will recover and recreate absolutely everything He creates. Romans 11:36; Revelation 21:5 (KJB). The Devil knows that when he kills evil people, he also kills their good natures as well and that is what he seeks to permanently destroy. 

God has a good reason to allow good people and evil people to be killed. God has determined that He will sort it all out, and He will make His final judgment in the end of the world. John 12:47-48 (KJB). When He was on the earth, Christ did not judge the world because He creates every good and living human in the history of mankind. Revelation 4:11 (KJB). Christ judged only the Devil and all evil on His cross. John 12:31-32 (KJB). Christ gained a complete victory over all sin, evil, spiritual death, and the Devil in His death, burial, and resurrection. I Timothy 1:10; Revelation 1:17-18; I John 3:8 (KJB). Therefore, Christ must forever save all of His living humans that He creates and loves, some by His grace, and all others in His final judgment in the end of the world. John 5:24; II Timothy 4:1 (KJB). Every human who has given their lives to the service of evil also has a good and living nature created by God. God intends to save that good and living nature from eternal death.  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 them all to repent and believe in Him as the Lamb of God their Savior so that He can use His fiery wrath against evil to dissolve their beings to separate their repentant, good and living natures for Him to recreate 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 22:11-12; Revelation 20:11-15 (KJB). II Peter 3:9 relates that God is "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." This verse can only mean that Christ must forever save all of His living humans because His Will cannot be thwarted. I Timothy 2:4 (KJB). 

The Fiery Wrath of God

                            II Kings 6:17 (KJB)

The king of Syria invaded Israel with his army and sought to conquer Israel. Apparently, his army happened to be much larger than the Israeli army because he tried several times to trap the Israeli army and overwhelm it and defeat it. But the prophet Elisha received messages from God, and he informed the king of Israel who was able to move his army in ways that avoided being trapped. The king of Syria thought that someone in his army was a traitor, but his officers informed him that Elisha told the king of Israel every move that the Syrian army would make and every word that the Syrian king would speak. II Kings 6:8-12 (KJB). 

The Syrian king knew that his army might just wander around in Israel and be slowly worn down by the hit and run tactics of the Israeli army, and that the only way he would ever conquer Israel would be to force the Israeli army into a direct battle. So, the Syrian king decided that he would find Elisha and kill him. The Syrian king's informants had found out that Elisha was in a city called Dothan, and so he came with his army and surrounded Dothan. A young man who was a servant of Elisha woke up early in the morning, and when he saw that a huge army surrounded the city, he became very afraid, and he pleaded with Elisha as to what they would do. Elisha comforted this young man by telling him that his army was greater than the army that surrounded them. Elisha then prayed and asked God to open the eyes of the young man, and he saw that God's army was around Dothan in chariots of fire and with horses of fire. Clearly, God opened more than just the eyes of this young man. God opened his mind as well. God's fiery army symbolized the fact that God uses His fiery wrath against evil to destroy His and His people's enemies. II Kings 6:13-17; II Peter 3:9-13; Revelation 21:5 (KJB)

Apparently, the Syrians sent a band of soldiers with an officer to arrest Elisha because they thought that the leaders of the city would give up Elisha rather than having their city destroyed. But Elisha prayed that God would blind these men, and He did. The ordinary response of any person who was blinded by another person would be to try to get away from that person, but God had blinded more than just the eyes of these men. God is able to control the minds of humans. Jesus simply walked through a mob who intended to throw Him off a cliff because He made them forget what they were doing. Luke 4:28-30 (KJB). Elisha led these men out of Dothan and all the way to Samaria because God had control of their minds, and they did not know what they were doing. When they got to Samaria, Elisha prayed that God would open their eyes, and then they understood what had happened to them and where they were. The king of Israel, who lived in Samaria, asked Elisha if he should kill them. As a man of God, Elisha replied with compassion that prisoners of war should be fed and given water. Matthew 5:44 (KJB). The king of Israel fed these soldiers and then sent them back to the Syrian army. This particular war ended in victory for Israel because of God's fiery wrath against evil and because of His compassion that He demonstrated through His prophet Elisha. II Kings 6:18-23 (KJB).