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Does God Punish people?
| YES. There are many
examples in both Old and New Testaments of God "punishing" people. The Old
Testament deals with God’s primary purpose of the teaching of his ways (according to
the culture the Hebrews knew). Often his teaching required (what we consider today)
radical and severe punishment. Hence, some think that the God of the Old Testament differs
from the God of the New Testament. However, even the Bible makes it very clear that a good
father punishes his children to teach them [Pr 3:11-12]. The more significant elements of
God’s character are God’s love, God’s forgiveness and God’s fairness.
God’s dealings in the Old Testament were not only to teach the people of Israel, but
us today (via the Bible). What could be more important? God also gave people repeated
attempts to repent and achieve forgiveness throughout the Bible. In fact today, if you
haven’t turned to Christ, no matter what your sins, the fact that you are still alive
exemplifies God’s amazing fairness in giving you another chance to love him. Yet,
eventually everyone is "judged." We can also be certain that a fair and
just God will deal fairly with all that WE (HUMANS) feel may have had an unfair life on
earth. That includes good and evil people and those that we think died prematurely. God’s
final judgement will be according to the "light" (information about Jesus) that
we receive [Rev 14:7; Heb 10:32-34]. |
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