The Gods Are Not Angry {But I Am!!}
Just got back from seeing Rob Bell on his “The Gods Are Not Angry” tour. I went as a pastor precisely because I was concerned that he would end up saying that God was not angry at sin. Bell lived up to my expectations. His closing words were:
“God is not angry because God is love.”
Sounds like John Lennon to me. Sounds like Oprah to me. Doesn’t sound like the Bible to me.
I’ll post more on this in the coming days. There are plenty of bloggers out there who feel the same as I do. Unfortunately, the masses gave Bell a standing ovation at the end. His message was simple: Don’t feel bad about yourself and all your shame and guilt because you have peace with God. This message was offered to all without the mention of repentance, trusting Jesus as the sacrifice for our sins and satisfying God’s wrath.
I feel like I was at an Oprah taping {but I did not get any free gifts!}. I go to bed thankful that I am saved from the coming wrath of God because Jesus died in my place, taking my sins, imputing His righteousness, declaring me righteous based solely on the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, and indwelling me by His Spirit. These wonderful truths were sadly left out by Bell.
And I go to bed meditating on Isaiah 63:1-6; Romans 1:18 and Revelation 19:11-21. These verses make God’s mercy and grace shine brightly on this cold, dark night…
I’m speaking at a conference tomorrow on the Holiness of God and His People and this is EXACTLY the kind of tomfoolery that I’m speaking against.
It’s because God was angry that His Son suffered on the cross to pay for our sin. Christ absorbed His wrath, assuaging His anger for those who believe.
That’s the glory of the cross, being saved by God from God.
Amen brother! Preach on. We wondered if you were there last night. We must stand up against this nonsense. The words of Dr. Bingham come to mind:
“You can call it whatever you like, but don’t call it Christianity!”
Bell is a universalist who believes that all people are “in” and “okay” with God. This is not the Gospel…
I’m thankful for men like you Gunny who are standing up for the truth of the Gospel today!
Sadly, these leaders continue to lead people in the paths of darkness. They and their followers have become futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts are darkened. (Romans 1:21)
22 Professing to be wise, they became fools,
24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves,
25 who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
26 For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature.
27 Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting;
29 being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers,
30 backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
31 undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful;
32 who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.
Perhaps a spiritual diagnosis of our condition could be: debased mind. Satan has succeeded in distracting nearly every single one of us, to the point that biblical ignorance is a national plague as well as an international one, becoming starkly evident even in those immersed in the “Christian culture.” Our undiscerning hearts are intimidated by unrighteousness, and– weakened by residual feelings of guilt– we “exchange” God’s grace for permission to sin. Then, like the Israelites bowing in fear (reverence) to Goliath, we have come as a nation/people/catholic (universal) church to the point of approving, even respecting those who practice unrighteousness; we elevate to celebrity status those who defy the LORD.
It is sad how so many of our leaders (national and religious-”knowing the righteous judgment of God”
are impotent, how their timid efforts to confront Goliath do so very little to stem the tide of ignorance in the people.
Where are our David’s? The battle is the LORD’s. And He sends Davids to be His instruments, to strike the blows against unrighteousness.
As you stand watch on the ramparts, Benji, you are one of our Habakukks, one of our Davids. Keep hope through this dark night; there are few but you are not alone. And we know He will answer.
Thanks for the post. Stand Strong at Country Bible Church. Give ‘em God, full of His own innate glory, completely enamored with Himself, wholly unsoiled by sin, unmade, unformed, infallible, supremely precious, absolutely righteous, completely self-sustained and self-sufficient before revealing His manifestative glory to all He would create in Genesis 1.
It is this God who brings tears to my eyes as I consider the full weight of His wrath poured out on His sinless Son because of the stench of my sin in His presence. It is this God whom I have been reconciled with and now experience peace through the sacrificial death of His Son. (Eph. 2:13-17) It is this God who declares that He is love, (1 John 4:
but reminds me in the following two verses that His love was made manifest to us in that He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
He is the great initiator, and we are the undeserving recipients of His love and grace! How deservingly He would crush me and send me eternally away from His majestic presence if I refuse to bow to Him as a sinner in need of a Savior.
Bullhorn guy and Rob Bell are both in error. May we never preach sin without grace or grace without repentance. May we never speak of the glories of Heaven, without also mentioning the vicious eternality of Hell. May we never preach peace without the reality of the wrath that rests on those who oppose our great and glorious King! (Eph. 2:1-3 & Rom. 2:5-
So stand strong Benji! Stand strong Gunny! Give ‘em God. Give ‘em Jesus. Give ‘em hope for reconciliation with the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. (and thanks to Dr. Jeffery Bingham for teaching us that beautiful God-Honoring, Trinitarian expression!)
Amen, Heath! Thanks for your encouraging words. Bell has overstepped the bounds here. Unfortunately he is whimsical, clever, engaging, charismatic, funny, etc and has duped the masses within evangelical Christianity through creativity and well-packaged, intentionally truth-absent speeches.
Thank God for Bingham and all those GIANTS {literally} who have gone before us and trained us in the orthodox, historic Christian faith. I am grateful to have studied under such men!
Amen. God is angry.
We’ve changed “give us this day our daily bread” to “give me more, more, more, and forget everyone else.”
We’ve changed “forgive us as we forgive others” to “kill them before they kill you.”
We’ve changed the bottom line from “love one another as I have loved you” to “I’m more right than you so that means you are going to hell”
We’ve changed the biblical message from “God bless the world through Abraham’s family” to “God bless America”
While I agree that Oprah-Lennon worldview can be naive about sin/evil/demonic, they have a good instinct that it is all about love (John 3:16; 13:34-35; 1 Corinthians 13). However, they may not realize how tough God’s love is. God calls us to have soft hearts and hard feet. Too often we have hard hearts and soft feet.
Bottom line. God is love. Bell is 100% right about that… and… a part of God’s love is wrath against demonic hoarding of love (as if it was a commodity).
Duh-sciple Tim
it would be good if people would actually do research to find out the context in which scripture came out of to understand what was actually being said. its a good think we had the infallible reformers to give us the correct interpretation of scripture and anything that doesnt line up with that is wrong. i would encourage to see whether jesus was jewish or not.
i would encourage you to see what their view of sin was according to genesis.
i would encourage you to see if jesus was abolishing the law or fullfilling it.
i would then encourage you to see what knowledge “your theology” knows of the history of isreal. Luther? Calvin? (missing a lot within the biblical story)
im tired of people opening their mouths without doing any research without knowing what the context and anthropology of humanity was in the context of scripture
maybe what you said about bell actually says more about you and your lack of knowledge on the situation.
( i dont agree with bell on his use of 3rd and 5th century rabbinical traditions reading back into the text)
you may be angry but i think you completely missed the entire point of the night and your ears were closed to begin with just like all the other bloggers you mentioned who hold to a reformed tradition and must defend it to the death. why cant these reformers reference any early church fathers except augustine? because they held a different historic faith than the reformers which is more in agreement with bell. hmmmm.
so who has a more traditional christian faith?
you probably caught me on a bad day.
sorry.
Would not Jesus, Who once looked upon men “with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts,” (Mark 3:5) still find just cause to be angry, seeing that men (though justified) still have hardness in their hearts?
“Let not carnal libertines imagine that the Messiah is come to discharge them from the obligation of divine precepts and yet to secure to them divine promises, to make the happy and yet to give them leave to live as they list. Christ commands nothing now which was forbidden either by the law of nature or the moral law, nor forbids any thing which those laws had enjoined; it is a great mistake to think he does…
“He in all respects yielded obedience to the law, honoured his parents, sanctified the sabbath, prayed, gave alms, and did that which never any one else did, obeyed perfectly, and never broke the law in any thing.
He made “good the promises of the law, and the predictions of the prophets, which did all bear witness to him. The covenant of grace is, for substance, the same now that it was then, and Christ the Mediator of it.
“He did not make void, but make good, the ceremonial law, and manifested himself to be the Substance of all those shadows.
“The gospel is the time of reformation (Heb. 9:10), not the repeal of the law, but the amendment of it, and, consequently, its establishment.
“He asserts the perpetuity of it; he designed not the abrogation of it, but that it never should be abrogated (v. 18). The word of the Lord endures for ever, both that of the law, and that of the gospel. Observe, The care of God concerning his law extends itself even to those things that seem to be of least account in it, the iotas and the tittles; for whatever belongs to God, and bears his stamp, be it ever so little, shall be preserved. God will stand by and maintain every iota and every tittle of his law.
“He gives it in charge to his disciples, carefully to preserve the law, and shows them the danger of the neglect and contempt of it (v. 19); Whosoever therefore shall break one of the least commandments of the law of Moses, much more any of the greater, as the Pharisees did, who neglected the weightier matters of the law, and shall teach men so as they did, who made void the commandment of God with their traditions (ch. 15:3), he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.
“It is a dangerous thing, in doctrine or practice, to disannul the least of God’s commands; to break them, that is, to go about either to contract the extent, or weaken the obligation of them; whoever does so, will find it is at his peril. Thus to vacate any of the ten commandments, is too bold a stroke for the jealous God to pass by. it is something more than transgressing the law, it is making void the law, Psa. 119:126.”
Matthew Henry (1662-1714) English Nonconformist minister
Would like to contact you. I was at the Rob Bell event in Atlanta.
I was outside warning people including those at my church that Bell is a Wolf in Sheeps Clothing Thanks for your report God Bless
RLL
I’ll error on giving the vast majority of those who replied to the original post the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise I’d deduce that you must be members of Westboro Baptist Church. With this in mind, here are my thoughts:
I have several friends who grew up in the “church” and have been fed spoonfuls of the most disgusting message known to man and been told that it as “Christianity.” No wonder they want nothing to do with it. I want nothing to do with what they have been fed. Indeed God despises sin, but he still loves the one who has sin (I’m not claiming that everyone will experience heaven). I think all too often we have the thought that God is this senior citizen with hemorrhoids, pissed off, and on a hair trigger to end anyone’s fun (the “Vintage 21” videos come to mind). God presents humanity with guidelines and teachings to living the best life worth living. I believe that’s the lens we should look through, not that of the fulfilling of an equation or being “spiritual’ enough.
God is love (I John 4:8, 16), not anger. Indeed He is angered, but He’s slow to it. Let’s look at the following passage which can be found in Exodus 34:5-7:
“Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”
God is indeed just. Observe the attributes He uses to describe Himself: compassionate, gracious, slow to anger (maybe the KJV left that one out), abounding in love (that one also), faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving. It is only after that beautiful preface when He lays out the fact that He is just.
Obviously we all think that we believe truth. Otherwise we’d believe in something else. I’d simple encourage us all to be very cautious when it comes to the judgment and vocabulary we use in matters such as these. For in the end we might be the ones claiming to proclaim truth, but in reality we are only pointing to shadows on the side of a cave (Plato Republic Book VII).
Chad,
Strange that you didn’t mention Exodus 32, where ironically, in contrast to your claim that God first reveals lovely attributes and then throws in being just, we find God quite angry at Israel’s breaking their covenant with Him by worshipping the golden calf.
And how does God respond?
Exodus 32:9 And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. 10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.”
I think that means He’s pretty ticked off/angry. How does Moses read the situation at hand?
Exodus 32:11 But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people.
Again, it sounds like God’s quite angry at their sin.
And then the Lord commanded Moses to kill all those who weren’t on His side:
Exodus 32:26 then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me.” And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. 27 And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘Put your sword on your side each of you, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill his brother and his companion and his neighbor.’” 28 And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And that day about three thousand men of the people fell.
3,000 people killed? And who wasn’t angry at sin? But this is not all. Look at verse 35…
“Then the Lord sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf, the one that Aaron made.”
Now, how do you read this passage and not come away with the slightest notion that sin does not anger a holy God?
But if you wrestle with this passage AND THEN go to Exodus 34 then you have a comprehensive picture of God. You will never be able to understand God’ love until you understand His mercy. And you can never understand His mercy unless you understand His anger. And you can never understand His anger unless you understand His holiness.
God’s love looks good when you realize that He mercifully offers forgiveness and reconciliation to Himself: the angry yet merciful holy Triune God.
Also, you conveniently left out verse 10 when you quoted 1st John 4:
“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
PROPITIATION means turning aside God’s wrath/anger. You can’t talk about God’s love unless you talk about his anger, otherwise you sound like Oprah.
The Son of the Right Hand,
Thanks for replying to my comment. I hope you will also reply to these thoughts and give me some more insight.
Is there a balance in your view of God? Or is God the drunk with rage Father who only pauses from His wrath when the high of endorphins sets in? It seems as if you’re pushing this idea of God being uncontrolled with rage.
Are you saying God hates sinners? I agree God does not like sin. I never said He did. He despises it because it separates humanity from Him. It separates that which is nearest to His heart from Him.
But, did God so love the world that He gave His only Son? Or was God so enraged with the world that He gave His only Son? I see Jesus loving and spending His time with the “sinners” in the Gospels and saving His anger for the religious leaders of His time.
I’d love to be misreading you, but the picture I see you painting looks a lot more like Adolf Hitler than Jesus the Christ. That’s the picture that has been painted to those that I care for and it bothers me that it might be painted that way for future generations.
I’d love to gain a better understanding of where you are coming from with this. Right now I see a hyper extreme.
If you have the anger of angels and have not love you are nothing. I think the majority of these posts are just plain arrogant. You judge him because he does not use your words, your terminology, your slant, your buzz words. Rob showed us our primal and ancient core is to commit the most offensive possible. To trust ourselves, trust our words, our inherited terminologies, our slant on God, our favorite buzz word. That we trust the old old old fashioned way. The way of the cave man, the way of modern man. Our way. The story he told was really about the history of human sin. Human failure, human foolishness, human wisdom, human effort and strife, human self righteousness. You are all so filled with it that you did not hear him talk about sin all night long. You confuse the word sin for sin itself. He hit on the essense of evil itself, but you were to busy being angry at him to hear it. The essense of evil is not sin itself nor is it the absence of the use of the term sin but the essense of evil is the refusal to acknowledge sin. Lets face it, our arrogance is the greatest sin of all. Trusting our rightness, our forgone conclusions, our lingo and our take on the world. Some cut themselves, some sacrifice their child in a fire, others suffer great embarrassment and social shame in an age of tolerance by sounding judgmental, angry and using the word “sin” as an act of self righteousness which they are convinced this sacrifice gains them the favor of the gods. They fight the trend of over tolerance to show their devotion to the unchanging lingo they learned so long ago. They have the words, the correct phrases. They are bible based, God fearing, self made prophets of furry. Yet they are hypocrites and arrogant finger pointers who sit on judgment of mens hearts. They hide in small closets where they are most approved of and except the shame of others as some crown of proof. Yet like bad pens, they blow their ink and the astonishing effect lands at the top of a google search for “the gods are not angry tour”
I am outraged at those who are outraged at the telling of this story of God’s gracious history with man.
As for myself, I was not angry at all about Rob Bells story. I barely knew a thing about him. I am reminded of Paul in Phillipians…
“In pretense or in truth Christ is preached, in that I will rejoice.”
Yet I fear that you will jump on the word Christ and say, ah ha, but what is Christ! That your unrepentant love of “holy terminology” and deep devotion to your arrogant subculture will be far more important for you to defend then the message of the human need to give up our own self righteousness and trust that God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son?
As our group discussed this event on the way home we soon realized we all took it very differently. Which then made us realize that Bell spoke so deep that our hearts all rose up and revealed themselves, irregardless of what was in them.
We all do spend our lives trying to tell others what we think pleases the gods.
Me included.
Tim, I do not understand why you are so critical-why your anger is so hot- towards those of us who are so uncomfortable with Bell’s unorthodox, radical style of preaching, that we are trying to contribute to the education of his actual and potential listeners by making them aware of how and in what ways his theology –and the way he presents the gospel– differs from the Bible.
You seem to be accusing us of refusing to acknowledge our sin (”the essense of evil is the refusal to acknowledge sin.”
You claim we are putting our trust in our own “conclusions, our lingo and our take on the world.” You say we are “sounding judgmental, angry and using the word “sin” as an act of self righteousness” and we “are convinced this sacrifice gains (us) the favor of the gods.” On all these points, I disagree with you wholly. Your judgment of our repentance is unmerited; we put our trust in the One Who gave us the Word which we are diligently searching and quoting; and we glory in nothing of ourselves, but only in The Lord (1 Cor 1:31) in Whose sacrifice we know our only favor rests.
Both you and James claim we adhere to a “reformed tradition” rather than Truth (with an assumption that reformed tradition could not speak or teach the Truth). You say we have “devotion to the unchanging lingo (we) learned so long ago. (We) have the words, the correct phrases.” Answer: To the greater extent, our apologetics are words and phrases used by God, found in the Bible. Personally, I have not received formal training in the reformed traditions. The Holy Spirit teaches me via individual study and many varied instruments and it is through these–not mantras or mystic experiences or subjective feeling– that my comprehension of Scripture has grown.
You say we “are bible based, God fearing, self made prophets of fury. Yet they are hypocrites and arrogant finger pointers who sit on judgment of mens hearts.” Personally, I am rarely furious. And, what is wrong with being bible based and God fearing? Indeed, I believe the tone of most of us who are pointing out absences/discrepancies in Bell’s preaching is one of regret and exhortation, rather than judgment. Our purpose is to educate, clarify, and edify, not to condemn men whose hearts we fear are deceived or whose beliefs are mistaken. It is in Love that we exhort and engage.
Of all the prophets of fury mentioned in the Bible, I can think of only one that was welcomed and heeded (Jonah in Ninevah). The prophet Jesus-who taught of God’s love but also foretold of God’s coming fury, was not well received. If there be prophets of fury today, it should be no surprise that their message will not be embraced.
Truth most effectively changes hearts when it is not veiled with “tolerance” or skirted with ambiguity. Jesus taught people with techniques suited to their level of understanding but He never taught them half-truths.
Prophets of fury were also always prophets of Mercy. Indeed, Fury and Mercy=two sides of the same coin. Wrath (against sin) and Love (for repentant hearts)=two sides of the same coin. With God, you cannot have one without the other; with God, you DO NOT have one without the other. This whole truth should never be neglected.
Even when His anger was hot, “His soul could no longer endure the misery of Israel” (Judges 10:16). In the midst of righteous fury, love governs His response. So it should be with us: in the midst of righteous anger, love must govern our response to one another.
you have nice words.
re: original post - it is not true that Rob left out “the work of Jesus Christ on the cross” - why do you lie?
If “The Gods Are Not Angry,” God’s Children should be.
“We must not only be angry at ourselves for the wrong and damage we have by sin done to our own souls, but– like Job–must abhor ourselves (Job 42:6), as having by sin made ourselves odious to the pure and holy God, who cannot endure to look upon iniquity. If sin be truly an abomination to us, sin in ourselves will especially be so; the nearer it is to us the more loathsome it will be. We should loathe ourselves for the evils which we have committed.
“The more we see of the glory and majesty of God, and the more we see of the vileness and odiousness of sin and of ourselves because of sin, the more we shall abase and abhor ourselves for it. ‘Now my eye sees what a God he is whom I have offended, the brightness of that majesty which by wilful sin I have spit in the face of, the tenderness of that mercy which I have spurned at the bowels of; now I see what a just and holy God he is whose wrath I have incurred; wherefore I abhor myself. Woe is me, for I am undone,’ Isa. 6:5.
“Self-loathing is evermore the companion of true repentance: ‘Then those of you who escape will remember Me among the nations… because I was crushed by their adulterous heart which has departed from Me, and by their eyes which play the harlot after their idols; they will loathe themselves for the evils which they committed in all their abominations’ (Ezek 6:9).
“God had challenged Job to look upon proud men and abase them. ‘I cannot,’ says Job, ‘pretend to do it; I have enough to do to get my own proud heart humbled, to abase that and bring that low.’ Let us leave it to God to govern the world, and make it our care, in the strength of his grace, to govern ourselves and our own hearts well.”
Matthew Henry
Good words, Shelley.
Hello Brother Bennie,
I pray you’ll be pleased to see how the Lord led me to incorporate some of your thoughts into this piece today:
Rob Bell Says God Has Already Made Peace With All Men
Shalom.
[...] on the cross, and indwelling me by His Spirit. These wonderful truths were sadly left out by Bell. (Online source, emphasis [...]
litmus test:
i know im in the right place if im on the opposite side of ken silva.