Why are people so insistent on believing that God must punish sinners just the way we want Him to? Why is it so important to us that “justice be served” in the way we want to see it happen? Why are we so resistant to believing that love itself can be a potentially far more lethal weapon of torture than an angry outburst of fiery wrath in physical flames of vengeance?
I am beginning to believe our resistance is because we are so completely devoid of any real understanding of the true nature of love itself and that our experience with human anger and revenge so overrides our attention. We have experienced so few, if any, conscious encounters with genuine, self-sacrificing love that we just can't begin to imagine how love itself could ever produce the kind of pain described in Scripture as the destiny of the lost. In addition, our human track of thinking is so deeply entrenched in counterfeit ideas of human justice that we continue to refuse to even consider that God's ways of dealing with evil may be radically different and insist on only interpreting every passage in His Word through the filters of our own traditions and our spiteful desires for revenge.
But what would be the potential effect on our lives, our thinking, our relationships and even our world if we were to actually dare to believe and embrace alternative insights about the potentially lethal nature of God's passionate love? Maybe part of the reason we won't even go there is because even thinking about its possibility begins to produce some of the pain in our hearts right now and it is too uncomfortable for us to even consider. It is far easier in some respects to believe in a God who has two opposite sides to His personality much like ours than it is to endorse beliefs in a God who is so different than us that it bends our whole perception of reality to begin to understand Him.
But what will happen when individuals and then groups of people begin to actually dare to embrace the real truth about God's perfect consistency, the eternal nature of His lovingkindness, the permanency of His grace and forgiveness and mercy and the lethal potency of His glory, purity and love? What would inevitably happen is that these same truths would begin to operate in the lives of those believers in their interactions with others, and everyone encountering them would be either attracted and compelled to want to run toward such an amazing God as they saw living in the hearts of such people, or they will intensify their resistance to these truths and in their pride of opinion their hearts will become even more hardened to such unbelievable ideas.
These kinds of revelations about God and His glory will have such a polarizing effect on everyone exposed to them that it will leave the whole world eventually divided into two distinct camps of opinions about what God is really like. And the results of such a polarization will be the outworking in their own lives of the ultimate effects of each of those belief systems. Those who choose to believe in a God who's love is so potent as to be lethal when unveiled in its fullness to those cherishing resistance, those believers will begin to channel that same love with growing intensity. They will exhibit that same kind of selflessness with that same kind of passion that will be unquenchable by any lies about God, for those lies no longer hold them hostage.
At the same time, those who fight against believing in a God of true and everlasting love will begin to experience in their own life the pain caused by their resistance against that love. As they see that kind of love demonstrated in the lives of those they increasingly oppose who are teaching about it and demonstrating it publicly, they will eventually stop at nothing to try to oppose them. They will find themselves attempting to coerce those who believe such “heresies” to change their minds and return to the more popular beliefs of an angry deity who reflects more closely the fear-based religion that has been the standard of belief for thousands of years. Others who dare to discredit the ideas of a God who is willing to torture sinners in flames of hell for rejecting His invitations of mercy will produce anger and resentment in those who oppose such “strange doctrines” and “new theology”. As their anger mounts against those who not only teach such things but also reveal more and more of God's true nature before the world, their own reactions of resentment will increasingly demonstrate the outworkings of belief in a God who will resort to force and torture to bring an end to the resistance movement against Him initiated by Satan long ago. Each side will begin to act more and more like the God that they have chosen to believe in.
What we choose to believe about God, the road that we choose to embark on from the fork that we are now facing, will determine the kind of personality we exhibit in the future and will result eventually in radical contrasts to those who choose the alternative route. From our current perspective it is impossible to conceive of the extremes to which we will find ourselves willing to go in the future based on the direction that we now choose. Those who cling to belief in a bi-polar type, carrot and stick concept of God who will someday run out of patience and roast His enemies in flames of torturous punishment will eventually be willing to treat their opponents that way themselves if they refuse to change their opinions. This has already been demonstrated many times in history and even yet today.
Likewise, those who choose to embrace and come to be intimately connected with a God who is never-failing in His compassion, who never ceases to show mercy, who is always fair, who engages in profligate acts of love and yet is perfect justice – these people will come to demonstrate those same characteristics in their own lives as they become clear channels of God's Spirit flowing through them. They will be transformed into individuals who look very much like “little Christs” – Christians in the true sense of the word. And like He did while here on earth, they will induce in their opposers by their unfailing compassion and unquenchable love the bitterness, rage and fury of everyone who demands that God simply cannot be the kind of being as is being demonstrated before them. Their resistance to accepting the real truth about God no matter how plain it is revealed in the lives of His loyal followers will eventually transform unbelievers into demonstrations of demonic rage and they will fully exhibit the terrible characteristics of the god they have chosen to worship – a god who is willing to lash out in angry vengeance to abuse and torture anyone who does not conform to His demands. They will demonstrate their lie-based beliefs about God against those who are likewise demonstrating their truth-based beliefs about the God who's love cannot be overcome with any amount of fear, intimidation, coercion or even death.
This is frightening for me to even think about or talk about. To realize that everyone is going to be transformed into an extreme version of the God they choose to believe in is both exhilarating and terrifying. But the Word of Prophecy has foretold this very thing will happen very soon. Furthermore, it is necessary for bringing this whole tragic universal war to a final conclusion. It has to become unmistakably clear to every intelligent being everywhere what the final results are for choosing either direction. The fruit of each belief system must be fully matured in the lives of those embracing them before the universe can be totally inoculated from ever repeating this horrible experiment with selfishness and independence from God.
As I have tried in my own clumsy and inept ways to share what I am learning about God in these areas, I often run into the resistance of tradition very quickly. And although it has not yet escalated into more mature effects of persecution that will be seen later, I have sensed that it is crucial that I have a clearer picture of God myself especially at the experiential level of my heart. It is not enough for me to just learn these things with my mind and be amazed by them or intrigued by them. I must have these revelations of amazing love and have the fire of God's passion inside of me burn away all of the lies about Him that still cling to the dark passages of my heart and the arteries that surround it. I must more fully experience the growing fire in my own bones of the truths about the radical nature of God's forgiveness, His stunning beauty and His perfect purity that cannot be approached without being fully synchronized with Him by His Spirit dwelling fully within me.
I feel increasingly at times the pressure to abandon what I have been learning about God and to return to the darker views of God that are more popular and acceptable that are being taught by the more mainstream religious leaders around me. I expect that at some point I will be urged to recant my heretical views that I have been embracing slowly over the past few years and submit to more established doctrines as taught by the educated professors of theology with far more years of experience and education than I will ever achieve.
But when I even start to think about returning to belief in a God who will resort to torturing the rejectors of His mercy in flames of fire to bring about a forced end to the great controversy, the uneasiness and conflicting emotions rising up inside of me create a terrible fear of rejecting precious truths entrusted to me by the Holy Spirit over the past few years. These fresh revelations from the Spirit and supported in His Word have served as a strong attraction to draw me toward the heart of the Father. To return to the standard beliefs about a God who is going to suddenly change the way He relates to sinners when He runs out of patience with them would force me to once again close my eyes to many clear statements in Scripture that have been forcefully shown to me by His Spirit as He has guided me into the path I find myself on at this time. To return to teaching about a God who is loving only most of the time but has an exception at the end of the battle would possibly force me to abandon belief in God altogether. For to believe in a God who is willing to act like His enemy when it appears to serve His purpose or for His advantage would be to dismantle every beautiful and compelling truth that I have learned over the past twenty years.
I suppose what I am beginning to feel is the pressure that is inevitable on both sides. This pressure is unavoidable and is caused by the natural effect of polarization inherent in this revelation about God. I am being forced to either move deeper into understanding and experiencing the things about God that I have been learning so far or I would likely have to abandon all trust in God altogether and live in fear once again. Any middle ground is starting to disappear and that will likely accelerate as we move closer to the final show-down between truth and falsehood. One thing is clear – the enemy of God will never back away from his forceful insistence on the lies about God he has promoted until long after we have all made our decisions. The conflict is only going to become more intense so I might as well face it and burrow myself deeper into the Word and the heart of the One who has been drawing me to Himself.
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