Agape Series

What is God really like? Jesus came to this world to reveal the character of God. He is the perfect expression of Him. Jesus said to Philip in John 14:9 "If you have seen me you have seen the Father."

In the first 4 books of the New Testament we are shown the first image of God and it is this picture that we will use to explain all the stories of the Bible that appear to give us a different picture.

This video is from the book called Agape.
 

The Bible often seems to through up apparent contradictions to the reader. Take for example:

Luke 22:36  Then He said to them, "But now, he who has a money bag, let him take it, and likewise a knapsack; and he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. 

In the above text Jesus tells his disciples to buy a sword just before his death, but then on the night He was taken He said to Peter:

Matt 26:52  But Jesus said to him, "Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. 

How do we resolve these apparent conflicts? It is not enough to read the Bible, we must know how to read it so it will make sense and this is the question Jesus put to a lawyer.

Luke 10:26  He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? 

This presentation looks at some key guidelines for reading the Bible that will resolve these apparent contradictions. This is important in our study of the character of God because there are many apparent contradictions that need to be resolved. 

Does God demand the death for sin? Did He institute a death penalty to punish those who transgress Him? Did Jesus die to satisfy His Father's death penalty? If this were true then God killed His own Son to satisfy His death decree and this is suppose to cause you to love Him. Do you detect a problem here? 

What really is the death of the cross? Why did Jesus have to die to save us? 

Almost all of the Christian world believe that God will personally destroy the wicked; they believe He will throw them away as worthless. 

Would you throw away something that you paid billions of dollars to purchase? Would you smash and destroy something that you paid an infinite cost to secure? 

To answer this question we must consider the cost of salvation. The cost of our salvation is measured by the love of God for His Son. The love between them and the cost they paid determines the value of what they paid to save us. 

When you realise the full cost you will know that God could not throw sinners away but in infinite sorrow and respecting the choice of the wicked let them have their decision to refuse Him. 

Behold the love of God and His suffering to save us and realise He would never crush and destroy someone so precious to Himself

In the book of Matthew is recorded one of the greatest sermons ever preached. It is a sermon preached by Jesus Christ. In these sermons He tells us to turn the other cheek and to love our enemies that we might be children of our Father in Heaven. So we become children of God when we love those who oppose us.

Just before Elijah was taken to heaven the Bible tells us that he called fire down from heaven on 2 lots of 50 men and their respective captains. When the disciples of Jesus came to Jesus frustrated with some Samaritans who were not treating their master correctly, they cited the example of Elijah bringing fire down from heaven to destroy them. The answer of Jesus tells us something profound about the character of God.

Luke 9:54-56  And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?  (55)  But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.  (56)  For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.

Did Jesus rebuke the actions of Elijah as well as His disciples? This presentation puts these pieces together to reveal the loving character of our Father in heaven. 

Would you burn your wayward child to death after decades of disobedience and evil? How is it possible to become so hardened in heart as to believe that the God who claims to be love would burn His wayward and wicked children alive in the agonies of hell? It is most certainly true that the wicked will die in agony and the torture of their internal torment will make their physical suffering feel insignificant. In this video you will learn the truth about hell and what causes the intense suffering. It does not come from our tender heavenly father but from the hardened hearts of sinful men. 

If God is love then why did He command that sinners be stoned to death in the Old Testament? Especially considering that stoning was a practice that came from Egypt. Exodus 8:26. 

There is much more to this story than many realise and it tells us a lot about how God deals with sin and how it reveals His tender mercy and love for the sinner.

In order for a person to realise their need of repentance they need to see their sinful condition. The Bible is a mirror to the sinner to show them their true condition. 

A person who reads the Bible in his sinful condition will imagine that God acts like himself in dealing with situations. When people test the patience of God, we imagine can easily be tempted to think He will be angry. The Bible is written in a way that can reflect our natural thinking but this is to show us our sin. 

Once we understand the life of Jesus when He came to earth we can truly know what God is like and then we can grasp that before this we imagined God to be like us - one who gets angry and will execute people who are evil. 

This presentation is a pivotal chapter in the book. If you grasp this chapter many things will start to come together. 

What does it mean to have the fear of God put into you? Most people understand this to mean that God causes a person to feel that He will destroy them if they don't submit to Him. 

If we wish to look at what God is like we must look to Christ and we get a picture of the fear of God when Jesus cleansed the temple. If we examine this story carefully we can discern more clearly that the fear of God is a conviction of sin that leads us to see the love and care of God for us. God never wants to harm us. He does not want anyone to perish. If we know that God is merciful, when He gently shows us our sins and we feel overwhelmed by them with fear, we can know that God is not against us and He does not seek to harm us but simply to be free from our sins which destroy us. Look and live. 

What does it mean for the Lord to be angry? Let us look to Jesus to define God's anger for He is the way to the Father. 

When Jesus stood before the leaders of Israel and told them they were hypocrites he was certainly angry. Was the culmination of this anger?

Matt 23:37-38  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!  (38)  Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

It causes the Lord incredible grief to finally have to allow his wayward children have their decision to reject Him. The anger of the Lord is to leave the house of the wicked desolate while experiencing terrible grief. 

A common word anger in Hebrew is aph and it means rapid breathing through the nose. It can be either anger or grief or both. It depends on how you view God. 

When you see the biblical meaning of anger your heart will go out to our Father in sorrow for all the suffering He has endured because of our sins. We we allow Him to gather us to him or will our house be left desolate for the serpent to come and destroy?

How do we reconcile the wholesale slaughter of nations by Israel with the sword against the words of Christ? 

…for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. 

Not only men, women and children also. 

Deut 2:34  And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain:

Were the Israelites truly in tune with the character of God? Why were they regularly afraid that He had brought them out into the desert to kill them? Was the deep darkness that fell upon Abraham in any way related to his taking of the sword to save his nephew and family?

Did the slaughter of the Shechemites by Levi and Simeon have any influence on the vow of Israel to utterly destroy their enemies?

The use of the sword by Israel is completely out of character with the life of Christ in the New Testament. How do we reconcile this apparent contradiction? 

The significance of the crown of thorns upon the head of Jesus carries a far deeper meaning than most imagine. When Adam sinned the earth produced thorns as a response to his sinfulness. 

The Bible tells us clearly that when men sin the earth is defiled and the rebellion that is in man is stored up in the earth like pressure of a fault line until it bursts forth and causes destruction. 

The principles in this chapter are vital to many of the stories in the Bible. 

The earth is also defiled under its inhabitants, Because they have transgressed the laws, Changed the ordinance, Broken the everlasting covenant. Isa 24:5

Yet despite all this sinfulness affecting the earth Christ holds back as long as possible these effects and it is like wearing a crown of thorns as He groans and travails under the weight of it. Rom 8:22

Who is the one who controls death? Many think God is the one who controls death but the Bible says Satan is the one who has the power and dominion of death. Death is the enemy of God and God does not need His enemies to help Him end the great controversy. He does not put people to death using a principle directly at war with his government.

Jesus said; "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love." What are His Father's Commandments? At the very top of the list is the 10 Commandments. Jesus kept the the Ten Commandments including the one that said You shall not kill. Jesus never killed anyone and thus He demonstrated or fulfilled the meaning of the law You shall not Kill. 

Some people say that this commandment should say "You shall not murder" and that judicial killing is lawful. Yet Jesus never did this. In this presentation we examine the sixth commandment closely and what it means. 

What is the meaning of the Parable that Jesus told concerning the Rich man and Lazarus. Did you truly teach us of an eternally burning hell when sinners can cry out for water to saints in heaven? In this episode we explore the meaning of Jesus words in the light of the rest of the Bible.

It is extremely simple to take isolated portions of the Bible and put them together to build a case that destroys the truth that God truly is loving, gentle, and kind. It has often been said to me, “You say that God does not kill people but the Bible plainly tells you that He does.” When you line the texts up they appear to present a compelling case for many people. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. Genesis 6:7 Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; Genesis 19:24 We could list several more texts like this. There are many stories in the Old Testament that seem to read very plainly but all of the stories combined are nothing compared to the mass slaughter of humanity described in the New Testament. And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, (8) And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. (9) And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. (10) And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. Revelation 20:7-10 It states that the wicked will be as the sand of the sea? How many grains of sand are there on a sea shore? We might propose a conservative figure of 100 Billion people apparently all shrieking and howling in the worst kind of agony. This makes the Old Testament narratives seem like kindergarten fables in comparison. Many Christians, in some strange form of triumph, read these passages and proclaim that it proves that the God they “worship” inflicts horrendous agony on billions and billions of people for rebelling against Him by roasting them alive for good measure. Admittedly the texts that speak of God seemly commanding the hacking to death of little babies are strategically overlooked or avoided except for the most hardened and callous individuals who somehow manage to defend this murderous behaviour as godly. What they consider as proof triumphant actually proves to be their greatest defeat. Who could rationally conceive of living eternally in the presence and offering worship on bended knee to such a horrendous being, while truly trying to convince yourself that you should never feel desperately afraid that you also might be killed one day? If the correct reading of these stories means that God sends sheets of flames from Himself directly onto the wicked, while all the righteous simply watch the proceedings like a movie from the walls of Zion hearing the shrieking and howling of the damned, then realistically would the righteous really rejoice when all their loved ones who rejected the truth are all burned alive (whether briefly or perpetually) without any mercy? Is there some sort of righteous satisfaction that the God you worship not only kills your wayward family members but tortures them first and slowly destroys them in the most unimaginable horror? I suppose some might say that God will wipe away every tear from their eyes and remove the former things from their memory. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. Revelation 21:4 Is this eternal bliss to be desired of, or is it the destroying of evidence by a character that is unimaginably cruel and vicious? There is something very unsettling about this picture for any rational person that has experienced the joys of love within marriage, or cradled a baby in their arms, or snuggled into the loving embrace of a parent, or even those whom have cared for their precious animals like a horse, dog, or cat. The use of these texts in this manner is often accompanied with the assertion that we must take the Bible as it reads or that we must read it literally and accept these plain statements as proof that God will kill the wicked. This video is from the book called Agape.

It is extremely simple to take isolated portions of the Bible and put them together to build a case that destroys the truth that God truly is loving, gentle, and kind. It has often been said to me, “You say that God does not kill people but the Bible plainly tells you that He does.” When you line the texts up they appear to present a compelling case for many people. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. Genesis 6:7 Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; Genesis 19:24 We could list several more texts like this. There are many stories in the Old Testament that seem to read very plainly but all of the stories combined are nothing compared to the mass slaughter of humanity described in the New Testament. And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, (8) And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. (9) And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. (10) And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. Revelation 20:7-10 It states that the wicked will be as the sand of the sea? How many grains of sand are there on a sea shore? We might propose a conservative figure of 100 Billion people apparently all shrieking and howling in the worst kind of agony. This makes the Old Testament narratives seem like kindergarten fables in comparison. Many Christians, in some strange form of triumph, read these passages and proclaim that it proves that the God they “worship” inflicts horrendous agony on billions and billions of people for rebelling against Him by roasting them alive for good measure. Admittedly the texts that speak of God seemly commanding the hacking to death of little babies are strategically overlooked or avoided except for the most hardened and callous individuals who somehow manage to defend this murderous behaviour as godly. What they consider as proof triumphant actually proves to be their greatest defeat. Who could rationally conceive of living eternally in the presence and offering worship on bended knee to such a horrendous being, while truly trying to convince yourself that you should never feel desperately afraid that you also might be killed one day? If the correct reading of these stories means that God sends sheets of flames from Himself directly onto the wicked, while all the righteous simply watch the proceedings like a movie from the walls of Zion hearing the shrieking and howling of the damned, then realistically would the righteous really rejoice when all their loved ones who rejected the truth are all burned alive (whether briefly or perpetually) without any mercy? Is there some sort of righteous satisfaction that the God you worship not only kills your wayward family members but tortures them first and slowly destroys them in the most unimaginable horror? I suppose some might say that God will wipe away every tear from their eyes and remove the former things from their memory. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. Revelation 21:4 Is this eternal bliss to be desired of, or is it the destroying of evidence by a character that is unimaginably cruel and vicious? There is something very unsettling about this picture for any rational person that has experienced the joys of love within marriage, or cradled a baby in their arms, or snuggled into the loving embrace of a parent, or even those whom have cared for their precious animals like a horse, dog, or cat. The use of these texts in this manner is often accompanied with the assertion that we must take the Bible as it reads or that we must read it literally and accept these plain statements as proof that God will kill the wicked.

When God warned Noah of a world wide flood, did God use coersion to cause Noah to build an ark? If God was the one who would personally drown millions of people in the flood is not the command to build the ark simply a threat. Would this not be saying "do this or I will kill you!" How is this different to the Mafia who protect people who do what they tell them and support them through appeasement payments? Would God every use manipulation to make people do what He wants? Learn the true meaning behind the Flood and how God truly was reaching out to the human race in mercy to save them without any manipulation of coercion being used. Learn how Jesus suffered in the flood in the loss of millions of his precious children who rejected His gentle appeals.

What is meaning of the Brass Serpent on the Pole recorded in the book of Numbers chapter 21? Why does Jesus compare Himself to the serpent on the pole? When Jesus suffered at the hands of humanity, the hatred of Satan towards Christ was manifested through fallen men. This exposes Satan's character. There are several layers involved in this story. Connected to this is the story of Moses throwing down his rod to the ground and it turning into a serpent? What does this mean? Why was this rod used by Moses to announce the plagues of Egypt? The answers to these questions will give the viewer a deeper appreciation of the Cross and its meaning.

One of the most vital things to know in understanding the characrter of God is His two step process of saving the sinner. Romans 5:20 tells us that God causes His law to enter into the private thoughts of man and this causes his sinfulness to actually increase. When it is obvious to the sinner that he is sinful and He repents then grace can be received. The commands of God for his people to slay other nations are part of the first step in the two step process. In order for men to see their murderous natures, God reflects back to them their sinful thoughts that they might repent. How do we know when God is actually speaking to us and when He is reflecting our sins back to us for repentance? Through the life of Jesus on earth. When God speaks like Jesus then we know it is His character. When God does not speak like Jesus, it shows He is reflecting human sinfulness. This is a vital principle to understand in the two covenant process. First there is the death of self in the revelation of sinfulness. Then there is the newness of life in the grace given by God. When you understand this principle then the Bible will open up the beauty of God's loving character in a new and living way.

The records Moses was the meekest man to walk the earth before the coming of Christ. The pressure of leading over 1 million grumbling people through the desert tested him to the limits. There are some stories about Moses that cause us to question what meekness really is. The command to slay the 3000 rebels at My Sinai and the swallowing up of Korah, Dathan and Abiram invite us to reconcile these actions with the life of Jesus. What can we learn? Was it God who swallowed up those rebellious men? We will gather the clues and piece them together to reveal that it was actually Satan who destroyed these men. It takes patience and careful analysis but the rewards are worth it.

We revisit the story of Elijah from earlier in the book. This time with more of the tools we have discovered from our first visit to this most interesting story. The story of Elijah going to heaven in a chariot shortly after calling down fire from heaven on his enemies seems some of the most conclusive proof about God's character revealed as a destroyer. The words of Jesus to his disciples as written in the Kings James Bible provide a critical clue to show that there is much more for this story. Take the time to put all the pieces of evidence together as its tempting to jump to a conclusion before gathering all the pieces of the puzzle of this story. If you search for God with all your heart then you will find Him and you will find Him to be just like Jesus His Son revealed Him.

We conclude this series with one of the most challenging stories in the Bible. The story of Abraham and Isaac. How can God ask Abraham to sacrifice his son when God says the following

Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, Ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Micah 6:7

Why would God test Abraham in this way? The bond between parent and child is usually one of the most precious. What does this story tell us about God's character? Are we sure we understand it correctly. The thought that God commands his followers to sacrifice their children to test their loyalty appears barbaric to many when they first encounter this story. The truth is far more beautiful than most realise.

We thank you for watching this series and it is our prayer that you can see that God is completely loving and non-violent without the need to discard one statement of the Bible. May you see that God is truly a tender Father that never uses violence against His children. Praise to the Father and His Son.

For more information http://fatheroflove.info