GOD of the Old Testament vs. GOD of the New Testament

Is The God Of The Old Testament A Tyrant?

Lately I hear this argument quite frequently. The God of the O.T. orders everyone to be stoned for minor offenses, and for His people to murder men, women and children to take their land. If you didn’t do exactly as He said, He had you killed.

I think the beginning of the problem here is the pre supposed assumption of God as a tyrant and the search for passages that would support such a claim. I think to find the truth one has to start before these “acts” of so-called malice.

Let’s go back to Genesis

God gave “everything” to Adam and Eve with the exception of the one tree. That sounds like a loving Father to me. He didn’t make this beautiful garden and give them a small portion of it, He gave them all of it with the exception of “one” single tree. He also informed them of the consequences of eating of that tree (Gen. 2:17).

“If God really loved them, why did He make that tree?” you might ask. If God did not give them the “choice” to decide, that would not be love! Would we want to marry someone against their will? Why? We want to be loved in return by choice. If a person holds another person captive who does not share their affection, we lock that person up; it’s called kidnapping. So if GOD made us love Him and didn’t give us this choice, would He really love us? Would we really love Him? No!

It is some what difficult to explain this to a person who doesn’t know or understand the nature of GOD; they just don’t get it. It takes the Holy Spirit to open our eyes.

In Genesis when God told Adam he would die if he ate from the tree, He didn’t mean at that very moment. GOD could have killed Adam and Eve and started over. How could anyone blame Him if He did? Were they not warned?

Again, this clearly shows a GOD of love and mercy.

After eating from the tree, they saw their nakedness and were ashamed (Gen. 3:7). So what did GOD do? He made them skins to cover their nakedness.

Now this is another subject but this is the first death in history. An innocent animal had to be killed to cover man’s sin.

So we have man, who sins against GOD, and GOD doesn’t kill him, instead He clothes him. That sounds like love and compassion to me.

  Continued…