October 3, 2012
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Biblical Contradiction #1 (Does God’s Anger Last Forever?)
MASTER LIST | NEXT >> #2 – God and Temptation: Do The Two Really Go Together?
Originally posted June 30, 2012.IN THE BEGINNING…
A while ago, I was presented with a YouTube video that, among many other things, suggested God’s anger is temporary…no, wait, lasts forever. The video was, admittedly, a very humorous presentation about what the Bible says about a wide variety of things and the supposed contradictions on the same topics. The video was made to be a game show with stick men and was well scripted in style, if not in accuracy of the content is referenced.A question was given about how long God stays angry at us when we sin. It doesn’t take much to discover that God truly hates sin, but is He always angry, like Zeus with his lightning bolts always at ready, or does His anger eventually subside?
The two portions of Scripture that were pitted against each other were Micah 7:18 and Jeremiah 17:4. Both books are from the Old Testament and are from the “Prophets” category; meaning that the writings deal with periods of judgment over the people of Israel for their unrelenting sinful lives. Typically, as can be especially seen in Jeremiah, God does not always act immediately, but gives people time to repent, or to stop their evil ways and follow God wholeheartedly. One thing is clear in both accounts, God is not happy at the moment.
IF YAHWEH ATTENDED ANGER-ANON
Micah 7:18 (and 19-20 for added context) reads like this:“Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because He delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as You have sworn to our fathers from the days of old” (ESV).
And then we have Jeremiah 17:4:
The wonderful possession I have reserved for you will slip from your hands. I will tell your enemies to take you as captives to a foreign land. For my anger blazes like a fire that will burn forever” (NLT).
To be fair, the ESV translation says, “…for in my anger a fire is kindled that shall burn forever.” It sounds like a contradiction between translations, even, doesn’t it? To be sure, the question doesn’t come to an easy answer in light of such evidence.
If examined alone, the case seems closed against God while exploring the verses highlighted. As with any good investigation, though, we really have to study these in a fuller context. That is, what is the bigger picture found in the passages that each verse is found in?
A HISTORY OF HISTORY
Micah 7:18 is at the very end of the book, and most of the entire account is regarding the promised consequences regarding Israel’s sin. However, it ends with the assurance that there will be a time when Israel will experience a time of renewal as a nation and the past will be completely forgiven. In Jeremiah 17:4, it is at a point where God is expressing His deep anger. That’s not the whole story, though.Countless times through Jeremiah, God calls to His people through the prophet, the book’s namesake, to repent, and if they do, His grace will abound and the past sins, as terrible as they were, will be forgiven. Even in His fierce anger, God speaks to Jeremiah:
The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah a second time, while he was still shut up in the court of the guard: “Thus says the Lord who made the earth, the Lord who formed it to establish it—the Lord is his name: Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known. For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the houses of this city and the houses of the kings of Judah that were torn down to make a defense against the siege mounds and against the sword: They are coming in to fight against the Chaldeans and to fill them with the dead bodies of men whom I shall strike down in my anger and my wrath, for I have hidden my face from this city because of all their evil.
It’s very clear that God is upset, but wait, that’s not the whole story!
Behold, I will bring to it health and healing, and I will heal them and reveal to them abundance of prosperity and security. I will restore the fortunes of Judah and the fortunes of Israel, and rebuild them as they were at first. I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me. And this city shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and a glory before all the nations of the earth who shall hear of all the good that I do for them. They shall fear and tremble because of all the good and all the prosperity I provide for it.” – Jeremiah 33:1-9 (ESV)
The bold parts I highlight because I wanted to show that even while God dealt with His people for their sins, He also would not abandon them to the aftermath of the destruction that invading countries would inflict. He would heal them both as a nation and as peoples. This doesn’t sound like a God whose anger lasts forever, now does it?
“DO YOU HEAR THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH?!”
Indeed, when speaking through the prophets, God would often use language that, while literal in essence, was not always as literal in speech. This can get confusing in terms of contrasting different translations (as I illustrated earlier), but doing such comparisons can often shed light on the actual meaning, too.For hear we see from Micah 7 and Jeremiah 33 that God’s anger isn’t actually everlasting, but simply intense. The NLT translation best highlights that when it reads, “…my anger blazes like a fire that will burn forever.” In this, God’s anger is given a description of how intense it is – not an actual length of time. After all, any fire that is not fed more fuel will eventually consume all its resources and die out. The fuel of God’s anger are people who sin endlessly, who refuse to follow God with their hearts in all they do.
JUST A MOMENT
Since I brought it up, how do we reconcile the ESV translation? Well, consider how God is quoted as saying that in his anger is “a fire is kindled that shall burn forever.” A fire burns best when proper kindling is set. For the non-outdoors people, kindling is smaller wood pieces or other burnable items that light easily to build a fire with. It doesn’t take much to get such a fire going, but it’ll steadily build with more kindling, and eventually larger sticks and logs that only intensify the fire’s ability to burn…”endlessly”.It’s rather just a different way to describe the nature of God’s anger, not its length. Later in 1 Peter 5:10, we see further support of God’s assurance of grace – not everlasting anger, “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” (The context of 1 Peter 5 has to do with a believer’s struggles to remain strong in Christ while others attack unjustly, but the message of God’s grace in light of trials and suffering still applies: God’s grace triumphs (James 2:13).)
Suffice to say that if God’s anger was everlasting, then even Jesus’ death on the Cross to spare us from Hell and to restore a right relationship with the Father would have been pointless. It’s actually not a stretch to say that God’s anger is proportionate to our sins. Keep in mind, however, that the Father in Heaven is slow to anger (Numbers 14:18, Nahum 1:3, Psalm 103:8 & 145:8), which is made clear by the fact that in Jeremiah many decades past before He finally allowed events to take place so that Israel’s invaders could finally overtake the nation when God’s people refused to obey Him.
God is compassionate, gracious, and never stops loving us, even in His anger. He remembers His promises to bless us. As you read through more of the Bible, you see how God deals firmly with His people and is never soft regarding His expectations, but like a parent to his toddler (or teenager!), the Lord is understanding. It is through that understanding that we are truly just children who have not yet matured that God exercises His grace and mercy, withholding is punishment until it cannot be held back any longer, lest we truly destroy ourselves. God’s anger is not rooted in disappointment, but in a desire to help us grow and discover His love, His goodness, and His blessings…and much more. God cannot help us to see these things if His anger lasted for all time.
Comments (7)
God’s Anger…at least….I like the idea of a vengeful God who is going reak havoc with the souls of all the people in life. It keeps me from doing it myself and I find comfort in that. Jesus kicking the crap out of the moneychangers in church I believe backs this idea up.
@Tallman - LOL WOOT! You, sir, are the FIRST to comment on this post long after it was posted. I gotta thank ya, truly.
Just gave me a good laugh.
I gotta be honest, though, I can’t tell if you’re being serious or playful or what. Care to clarify?
Isn’t anger a human emotion ? Isn’t vengeance a human emotion ? Aren’t these elements beneath God ? Jesus, I can understand, he’s a man, a good man, perhaps the son of God, but still a man. He’s gonna blow his top, everyone does.
God, however – as humans dare we even begin to try and interpret His ways in our human comprehension ?
@dw817 - Emotions are very much a God thing. Remember, we’re created in God’s image. While we clearly don’t have EVERY aspect of God manifested in our humanity, emotions are definitely one of them.
Keep that in mind as you think about these things later. 
Anger is an emotional response to an injustice. God definitely demands justice – it’s part of His nature for that matter. That’s why death is the clear consequence for sin. Sin is to disobey the Lord of LIFE, thus, there is death.
Vengeance isn’t an emotion so much as it is the strong desire to seek justice. But with our broken human nature, vengeance is perverted if we seek it on our own. Vengeance is the response to one’s purposeful infliction of some kind of offense. Only God can respond properly, as He has never sinned.
God was both man AND deity at the same time. He maintained both natures equally, fully. Jesus IS God, and God definitely demands justice, as did Jesus (not to overshadow His expectations for grace and mercy). Jesus never just lost His cool. He never let His human nature get out of control the way the rest of humanity does. Humanity has let its emotional nature control it, however. Jesus never “blew His top”.
Alone, you’re right, I think, that our attempts to interpret God are near-futile. However, one thing I often notice when people make statements like that is that God is perfectly capable of making His desires perfectly and clearly known to us.
(My apologies if my response tonight seems short or slightly impersonal. I’m very tired and trying to get some other work done, but I wanted to make sure I gave your comment some attention.)
I think that we must be infused with God in a
way that comes to mind upon reading this. But first, thanks for doing this. I
sometimes tend to be impatient with people… not good when all that is
required is time and patience to come to an understanding of what they think
rather than make judgments on them… that want to point out that the bible is
full of contradictions. Then, I remember, I did the same… ask people I know
for more than five or ten years; they know. I did myself need to look into some
of these apparent contradictions; so, these problems of supposed contradictions
actually did me well then; and in the end good is good; isn’t that good.
I do enjoy humor and even this youtube video game show humor that is mentioned.
I enjoyed it.
You have a terrific mind and I appreciate what you’ve been working on here.
Personally, I never related to God as angry. In fact, for most of my life, I
simply ignored that some bible stories related the wrath of God; vengeance. I
turned away from discussions about “an eye for an eye” and so on. Certainly,
both for myself and later for others, I’d best had invested myself more in work
such as you’ve compiled here. Thanks! You’ve provided an inspiration.
@Hunt4Truth - This is perhaps the best comment I’ve received yet on my series. Thank you so much for that.
If you happen to take the time to read the rest of my articles so far, I hope they do you further good – and get a good laugh along the way.
What was it that helped you come to know Jesus, personally?
Well, first off, I was brought up in a Christian family. So, I suppose it bagan early on that Jesus was our savior. Of course that was nearly impossible for a child to understand. I came to read many volumes of text from Pierre Theilhard de Chardin, Thomas Merton, bios of various saints (Chatholic), St. Agustine, C.S. Lewis, Richard Foster, Billy Graham, and some others that don’t pop into my head now. I also read several Buddhist and New Age authors. I read the gospels many times and other NT books somewhat often, Psalms, and the prophets. I’ve read most books but I don’t consider myself any sort of biblical scholar. My first wife was a born-again Catholic. I suppose she and her family had a fairly strong influence too. Many decades past where I knew Jesus only intellectually. Some years ago, I began to pray daily and I settled on one single statement in every day prayer – from John “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through
Me.” Presently, now for many years, this is the only reminder that I do daily repeat to myself. Geneerally I pray only for God’s Will and my relationship developed deeply over years. I am a teacher and I maintain an open-minded approach to others. I only get annoyed by the debaters. See, they that say the bible is full of contradictions; for example. It seems that it has come time for me to even face debaters. I will read more of your work. Thanks for taking some time to reply!