- *Who God loves ...

 

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*Who God loves and Who God hates*

*The Righteous*. These are not perfect, sinless people. These are simply people who sincerely care about pleasing God. Because they care, they are swift to respond to the Holy Spirit’s convictions. Do they sometimes sin on purpose? Of course they do. Do they always obey every single conviction right away? Of course not. But when God looks at their hearts, He sees that they really do care about pleasing Him. Some examples from the Bible are Abraham, Elijah, Job, David, Paul, Mary, and Peter. You could also be a member of this group today. Do you sincerely care about pleasing God? If you do, then you are a member of this group.

 

When He is speaking to the righteous, God demonstrates great pleasure, patience, mercy, and love. These are the souls who God boasts about with great pride. And though this group is far from perfect, God will often describe them as being perfect in His sight.

Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man fearing God and turning away from evil.” (Job 1:8)

 

Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God. (Gen. 6:9)

 

“…like My servant David, who kept My commandments and who followed Me with all his heart, to do only that which was right in My sight.” (1 Ki. 14:8)

 

*Rebels who are still being given time to repent*. This second group of souls does not sincerely care about pleasing God. At the present, they are intentionally defying Him. Today carnal Christians fall into this second category. We are not pleasing to God when we are intentionally shunning His convictions and reveling in sin without any concern for His feelings. In the Bible, we find God urging this group of souls to repent of their rotten heart attitudes and start obeying Him. We find Him clearly identifying the attitudes that He finds displeasing, yet along with the conviction of sin He also emphasizes that reconciliation is still possible. This group still has hope of getting into a good place with God, and He is constantly urging them to return to it. He also expresses great grief over the fact that these souls are choosing to defy Him, and He emphasizes that He wants to bless them, not punish them. But at the same time, He warns them that if they don’t shape up, punishment is going to come. Here are some examples of God speaking to this group of souls:

 

“Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord, “Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool.” (Isa. 1:18)

 

“Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Eze. 18:32)

 

Seek the Lord while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. (Isa 55:6-7)

 

 

*Rebels who God has completely rejected*. The souls in this third group have a history of willfully defying God. When He tells them to do something, they go out and do the opposite. They don’t care about what He wants. In fact, they hate Him. All of these souls used to be members of the second group and God used to call them over and over again to repent of their rebellion and be restored to a right relationship with Him. These souls knew exactly what they needed to do to get right with God: a simple change of heart attitude was all that He ever required. Yet these souls have adamantly refused. Under the Old Covenant, these souls might have once respected God and later turned away from Him, or they might have hated Him their entire lives. Because the New Covenant offers complete atonement for all sins through Christ, there are no Christians in this third group. Even the worse Christians will remain in the second group: souls who God is urging to repent. *The only souls who can end up in this third group are those who have never had their sins atoned for by Christ and they are adamantly refusing to submit to Him as their Lord and Savior*.

 

When God still considered these souls to be part of the second group, He offered them many chances to repent. But then the day came when He decided He was too disgusted to put up with them any longer. He then moved them into this third group in His mind, and decided to throw them into Hell. These souls are still alive on the planet, but they have been eternally damned by God. Do they realize it? No. They didn’t feel any great change come over them the day that God gave up on them. Instead, they just go on living for themselves and ignoring God, business as usual.

 

So what happens if these souls try to repent? They won’t because they can’t. *These souls are spiritually unable to repent of their sins because God is intentionally blocking them from doing so*. It’s like He’s permanently crippled them. This is terrifying stuff, and yet we find it happening throughout the Bible and we’ll see some examples in a moment.

 

It is critical to understand that *we cannot repent of sins without God’s help*. Before you can repent, you have to understand that you have sinned and that God is angry with you—this is something the Holy Spirit must explain to you. Have you ever noticed how quick we are to justify our sins? When we do something wrong and we get called on it, our first response is often to try and justify our behavior—to give some excuse for why it was really okay for us to do what we did.

 

Without the illumination of the Holy Spirit, we will go through life totally excusing ourselves of our sins and pretending that our rebellion is no big deal. This is why we will find an arrogant, judgmental, ill-tempered grouch saying, “Of course I’ll go to Heaven when I die. I’m basically a good person. I don’t need some Savior to die for me.” The person is so used to justifying his sins that he doesn’t even see how warped and black his heart has become. This is what we are like without the Holy Spirit. It is only God Himself who causes us to be uncomfortable and distressed by our sinful state. Without His help, we never realize we have a problem, so we never seek any solution. In this state, we lose all fear of God. Even if He were to get in our faces and tell us that we were eternally damned, we simply wouldn’t be upset. We see this happen to an evil priest named Eli in the Bible. The man and his sons were so defiant towards God in their hearts (even though they were performing a bunch of religious rituals everyday), that God finally got fed up and cut them off. When God cuts souls off, He becomes very hateful towards them. He no longer has any mercy or compassion or love for them. Listen to the angry way that God speaks to Eli in this passage:

 

“‘Why do you scorn My sacrifice and offering that I prescribed for My dwelling? Why do you honor your sons more than Me by fattening yourselves on the choice parts of every offering made by My people Israel?’ Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I promised that members of your family would minister before Me forever.’ But now the Lord declares: ‘Far be it from Me! Those who honor Me I will honor, but those who despise Me will be disdained. The time is coming when I will cut short your strength and the strength of your priestly house, so that no one in it will reach old age, and you will see distress in My dwelling… Every one of you that I do not cut off from serving at My altar I will spare only to destroy your sight and sap your strength, and all your descendants will die in the prime of life. And what happens to your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, will be a sign to you—they will both die on the same day.” (1 Sam. 2:29-36)

 

 

*So does God hate certain people? Absolutely! To deny this is to reject a truth that God puts in front of our faces all throughout the Bible*. When we try to avoid the subject of God’s anger, we remain mystified by the concept of Hell, and we reject the notion of eternal damnation by saying things like, “Hell is only temporary. God doesn’t really enjoy tormenting people. Eventually, everyone will end up in Heaven. Jesus is deeply grieved when souls end up in Hell.” Each of these statements is an absolute lie. God doesn’t hate to torment His enemies. HE LOVES IT. He relishes it and He flaunts it. He finds it so satisfying that He just can’t get enough of it, which is why the souls who end up in Hell will be tormented there for an eternity.

 

 

When we are badly taught about God’s anger, we end up thinking that God delights in torturing everyone—that He is getting high off of making our lives miserable on earth. But this is another lie. *There is only one group that God delights in tormenting: the group He has eternally cut off. THERE ARE NO CHRISTIANS IN THIS GROUP*. *If Jesus is your Lord, then God does not delight in tormenting you. Yes, He will discipline you, and if need be, He will give you quite a severe beating. But His love towards you will never falter, and everything He does to you will be out of a desire to draw you closer to Him. This is the power of Christ’s atonement: once you are accepted by God, you are permanently shielded from ever becoming an object of His hate*.

 

*But if you are not atoned by Christ and you reject the Holy Spirit’s many invitations to repent and get right with Him, then the day comes when the Trinity will decide that you are now a member of that third terrible group. At that point, the Holy Spirit, Jesus, and Yahweh will all consider you to be Their enemies, and Their love for you will change into intensely hatred. You will be someone who They delight in tormenting and They will publicly flaunt your misery before other creatures They have made for all of eternity* (see Why is Hell eternal?).

 

Truth is like a coin: it has two sides. We greatly deceive ourselves when we only talk about the happy side. *To get a correct understanding of God, we need to talk about both His love and His wrath*. Do you want to gain a deeper understanding of God’s love? You have to go through His wrath to do it. It is only by studying the complete picture of God’s wild Nature with all of its opposing extremes that you end up completely blown away by His incredible love, grace, and mercy. Just as your bed feels extra soft and wonderful when you’re dead tired, so also the magnitude of God’s love is revealed when it is studied within the context of His immeasurable wrath. We are deluded if we think we can dismiss some of God’s core characteristics and then think we can know Him well. We don’t get to decide who God is for Him, and there are many aspects of Him that will greatly upset us. But if we let the Holy Spirit educate our souls, we will end up feeling far more secure and confident in God’s love for us than we were when we sat around pretending that He never gets mad at anyone.

 

God publicly flaunting the punishment of His enemies is very prominent theme in the Bible. Listen to how He speaks to the unrepentant city of Nineveh, who has fallen into the permanently rejected group:

 

“I am against you,” declares Yahweh Almighty. “I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show the nations your nakedness and the kingdoms your shame. I will pelt you with filth, I will treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle. All who see you will flee from you and say, ‘Nineveh is in ruins—who will mourn for her?’ Where can I find anyone to comfort you?” (Nah. 3:5-7)

 

When God mows down His enemies, He wants everyone to recognize His hand at work. This is why we find Him constantly emphasizing to Israel that He the One who is bringing her enemies against her. While human soldiers smash infants against rocks, rape women, murder men, and burn down homes, God wants His people to see that it is really HIS hands that are ripping them apart. The humans are merely tools that He is using—like a bat that a man swings about. But God is the One directing all of their activity and He takes full credit for all of the carnage and misery that ensues.

 

“I will summon all the peoples of the north and My servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon,” declares the LORD, “and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and against all the surrounding nations. I will completely destroy them and make them an object of horror and scorn, and an everlasting ruin.” (Jer. 25:9)

“I will bring more and more famine upon you and cut off your supply of food. I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will leave you childless. Plague and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I will bring the sword against you. I, the LORD, have spoken.’” (Eze. 5:16-17)

 

*We aren’t doing God any favors when we try to deny His involvement in the terrible things that happen in the world today. On the contrary, we’re insulting and angering Him when we dare to suggest that anything could happen in this world without His direct involvement or contrary to His will*.

 

“I am the LORD, and there is no other,

The One forming light and creating darkness,

Causing well-being and creating calamity;

I am the LORD who does all these.” (Isa. 45:6-7)

 

“Behold, I Myself have created the smith who blows the fire of coals

And brings out a weapon for its work;

And I have created the destroyer to ruin.” (Isa. 54:16)

 

“On all the bare heights in the wilderness destroyers have come,

For a sword of the Lord is devouring

From one end of the land even to the other;

There is no peace for anyone.” (Jer. 12:12)

 

If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.” (Rev. 14:9-11)

 

*Because Revelation is so poorly handled in the Church today*, Christians read this passage and then start panicking about the dreaded “mark of the beast.” Today many false teachers are using the metaphors in Revelation to try and keep you in a state of constant angst so that they can profit off of your fear. They want you to buy their books and movies and pay them money so that they will “decode” the book for you and put your mind at ease. Of course whenever you listen to these jerks, all that really happens is you end up even more scared than before—convinced that Satan’s kingdom of darkness is about to swallow you up in some terrible age of hideous persecution. This is all sheer rot. There’s nothing in Revelation that we haven’t already heard God telling us before. Just like every other prophetic book in the Bible, Revelation focuses on a particular period in human history and addresses specific issues of that time. Yes, there are some predictions about the future, but mass persecution of the Church and the rising up of some crazed antichrist are not on God’s menu for the end of the world. For more help with this, read The Book of Revelation In Perspective and follow the links that are listed at the end of it under “Further Reading.”

 

*Whenever someone is promoting fear, they had better be talking about the reverential fear of God. Any other kind of fear—especially the fear of Satan, the fear of other humans, and the fear of future trials—is coming from demons and you need to reject it*. It is not biblical to teach Christians to obsess over the powers of darkness and cause them to lie awake at night worrying about what Satan will spring on them next. God wants you to be focused on HIM, not stupid demons and rebellious humans. God is your loving Shepherd, not some monster who keeps leaping out of the closet to scare the pants off of you. If you have teachers in your life that always end up making you feel distressed, fearful, and dismayed about your future, it’s time to make some changes. These people are leading you astray.

 

Now all of that said, let’s read our passage in Revelation again and realize that whenever God is speaking about eternal damnation, He is ONLY speaking about that third group of souls who He hates—rebels who have never repented and who He has eternally cut off.

“If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the Presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.” (Rev. 14:9-11)

 

Notice the reference to worship. These are not souls who want to serve God but they’re buckling under cultural pressure. These souls are voluntarily worshiping other gods. Worship is a soul activity. God is talking about core defiance here, He is not talking about just giving lip service to Caesar, nor is He talking about screaming blaspheming of Jesus’ Name in order to avoid having your leg sawed off by a bunch of sadistic torturers. Notice how this worship of the beast and receiving the beast’s mark are paired together. This is because they are both activities which represent willful decisions to devote one’s soul to a supernatural being that is not God. In this passage, God is not threatening to throw Christians into Hell if they have a weak moment. He is talking about that third group of souls, and now notice how hatefully He speaks about them:

 

“…he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the Presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.” (Rev. 14:9-11)

 

Notice the three themes: intense hatred, endless torment, and God publicly flaunting the punishment of His enemies. We find these themes coming up over and over again when God speaks about souls in that third group. Notice how His enemies are being tortured in the presence of both Jesus and nonhuman beings—the angels. In eternity, the activities of Hell will be on display before multiple creations that God has made, just as the inhabitants of Hell will come from different creations (ie, demons and humans). Hell is going to serve as a powerful, terrifying reminder that God will not be mocked. If we submit to Him, we will receive mind-blowing grace and mercy. But if we do nothing but defy Him, it’s going to be all bad.

As a Christian, you need to understand how God defines His enemies and realize that He is constantly changing the audience He is talking to in the Bible. So as you read through a passage, take your time and ask yourself “Who is this phrase addressing?” When God talks about rewarding souls, He’s talking to the first group. If He’s urging someone to repent, He’s talking to the second group. If He’s spewing hate, He’s talking to the third group. Which group are you in? If you sincerely care about pleasing God, then you are in the first group. You need to understand which group you are in so that you stop internalizing messages that are not being directed at you. One of the most common ways that Satan uses Scripture to beat us down is by trying to get us to absorb messages that are not addressing us. When you’re a member of the first group and you’re reading a passage that’s talking to the third group, then you need to realize God isn’t talking directly to you. Is there value in reading portions of Scripture that aren’t addressing your group? Most definitely! This is how we learn about who God is and what He cares about—by studying how He talks to all three groups.

 

 

When Jesus comes onto the scene in the New Testament, He continues to address the three different groups. Fed up with rebellious souls who refused to come to God even after Jesus had preformed miracles in front of them, He says:

 

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. Nevertheless I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend to Hades; for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day. Nevertheless I say to you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for you.” (Matt. 11:20-24)

 

The emphasis on eternal damnation and the absence of an invitation to repent cues us that Jesus is addressing souls in the third group here. Many of the souls in these three towns–Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum–have been moved to the third group and permanently rejected by God. They didn’t realize that when Jesus came to them He was giving them their last opportunities to repent. They waited too long, and now they have no hope at all.

 

Learning how to identify which audience God is speaking to will radically change the way you interpret passages in the Bible and it will help you avoid many common pitfalls. Always look to the Holy Spirit to guide your interpretation of Scripture. Don’t just believe what you’re told until He confirms the truth of it to your soul.

924jeremiah.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/the-enemies-of-god/

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David Osmin Valiente Villegas (goo.gl/97b9mA) via lara stang (goo.gl/WQDUzv)

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