God's Vengeance...
- White Stone
- Jun 9
- 11 min read
It is the ordained exodus to that country of America where the same cause
of the departure from that country of Egypt is scripted. This is that crusade
that forced the children of Israel to go beyond the seas in search of a
compelling blend of events to arouse them to a new sense of their spiritual
self and to an uncommon interest in their self ingrained, god-fulfilling
prophecy. Reason, with human incentive and God’s cause mounts to a
natural climax of cataclysmal force and great spiritual beauty to be the
liveliness of a people long oppressed in spiritual, intellectual, and economic
domains. God’s people will be as literature that has much to teach America
in the way of fearfulness in the sins of life, as it practiced idealism in face of
the most degrading and debasing environment. This country’s mantra for its
duration has been “we'll do wrong and nothing but wrong and we'll prosper
in it”. With one word, with a single word, God offered this nation the opening
to abandon the path of iniquity that they've followed hitherto. Repent! Or fire
and flame! The holy scroll you have defiled. You have no one to shield you
now. The whole house will be brought to ruin.
It is because the Three Divine Persons have the same rank, and each
receives the same adoration and glory, that we made in their image are
expected to care for and regard others in consideration of ourselves in their
likeness in the final day. When violence, oppression, and sorrow are
perpetrated against God’s people, God will bring justice and vindication as
He hears those slain because of the word of God and the testimony they
have maintained. They called out in a loud voice, “how long, Lord”. Through
these is heard the cry of all the innocent victims throughout history. God’s
delay of justice is not long. His determined people have to shape history.
Because our authentic Lord had likewise a vanquished cry. So, we too, cry
out with that faith, that cannot be silenced. Not being worried about
ourselves, but for the lives that may be. The biblical narrator, the Holy Spirit,
does not tell us how long it will be until the Lord judges the inhabitants of the
earth and avenges His people. We are given no false expectations. We know
the oppression will continue in God’s purpose. Nevertheless, oppression is
not forever. We have hope. And the sign of our hope is the faith which
prepares us for the time of the “vengeance of God,” the opening of the
seventh seal. The concrete realization of the divine justice is accomplished
in the day of the Lord. In light of the slain Lamb, and the cruelty put upon His
people of faith, and the martyrs torturously murdered in the last day, God’s
wrath will be universal, being discharged against all who deserve it. No
amount of goodwill, giving to the poor, helpfulness to others, or even service
to God can exclude a person from the “all”; the all who would not repent and
have sinned and fallen short. God will fashion vengeance not in a vindictive
way, but in a loving gesture that overcomes the hate and violence of history.
Why this fashion...the wrath of God was totally absorbed on the cross, and
that's a reason for all to have ceased to sin and rejoice. God’s wrathful
vengeance is reserved for and justly directed at sin. Scripture describes the
recipients of God’s vengeance as “ungodly”. But the wrath of God at the final demonstration brought forth in its fullness, will be the most tragic
demonstration of destruction unmeasurable by holy standards.
In that final day the world will feel the full brunt of His wrath. There will be
no caution, no restraint. Thank God that even His displeasure is holy.
Nothing having a deleterious taint of sin escapes...nothing!
God reasoned, preached, taught, and revealed the consequence of sin while
speaking in the garden. Man’s enmity with his fellow man originates with his
being at enmity with God. God’s disgust with the antediluvian beings, being
plainly evident, was in actuality a blessing. It is a powerful and provocative
reminder of our need to be reconciled to Him. So much so that we are without
excuse if we refuse to repent. That reality shouldn’t require any detailed
substantiation. It is plainly evident throughout all of humanity regardless of
history, ethnicity, gender, or geographical location that the conflict continues
unabated today. The relentless hostility between people going on in the world
today who do not love God is the manifestation of their hostility toward God.
The Creator’s wrathful disposition toward these rebellious creatures is both
justifiable and entirely consistent with His righteous character.
Judgments, trumpets, thunders, seals, vials...and the lake of fire. Reserved
wrath! The wrath of God is a deeply biblical truth. It affirms God’s righteous
displeasure with sin and His just retribution upon unrepentant sinners.
Starting with the short history of this doctrine in America, there will be a
national and a personal punishment, and the world will undergo the divine
attributes of God vengeance. The nature of God Himself and His divine love
is revealed through in His wrath. In other words, God’s love is a pure and
holy love, and just as God calls His people to hate evil, so God hates evil.
God’s vengeance magnifies the holiness of His love. God’s foretelling of His
vengeance is to generate wisdom to understand the fullness of His justice
and mercy. God set bounds to wickedness. And when the wicked have filled
up the measure of their sin, vengeance will come upon them to the uttermost.
God does not stir up His act of vengeance. It is the cause that promotes its
full weight. He will come forth in the fierceness of His anger; He will execute
wrath with power, so as to show what His wrath is, and make His power
known. The consummate degree of punishment, vengeance, and wrath will
not be executed till the day of judgment. Wrath will then be executed without
any merciful circumstances, executed without any mixture. No merciful
design in it. God truly has a wrathful vengeance towards those who hold truth
in unrighteousness. God’s vengeance is provoked by sin. His wrath is
momentary once His good purpose is achieved. Its His love that endures
forever.
God’s elected people never offer an apology for His wrathful vengeance. Do
not think this a blemish on God’s character. Profitable contemplation is our
love offering to others. It is our staying with the oppressed, providing them
consolation and showing them that God is love. We offer the reasoning which
reveals the vengeance of God is His eternal detestation of all
unrighteousness. It is the displeasure and indignation of divine justice
against every evil. It is the holiness of God stirred into activity against sin. It
is the moving cause of that just sentence, which He passes upon the wicked.
God is vengeful against sin because it is a rebelling against His authority, a
wrong done to His inviolable sovereignty. It’s not a vindictive retaliation, it’s
a vindication of His dominion. His wrath is a perfection of Himself revealed
from heaven. In this revelation from heaven most fail to consider the mystery
of God’s vengeance thinking it only to be directed toward the enemies of His
people Israel. In this mystery of God’s vengeance is the impact of His mercy
to defeat the schemes of Satan. God knows there are likewise enemies
within Israel. Those that would turn their hearts from the true and living God.
By doing this, especially because they have the truth, they are provoking
God to anger. Without repentance and because they know better, God will
bring about retribution. God’s warning of vengeance is intended for
restorativeness. His warning is designed to return everyone and everything
back to God’s original intent and purpose for them. By allowing His enemies
to experience the effects of their own choices, the truth about God’s self-
enforcing principles starts to become evident, and as a result, respect and
honor for the name of God can be increased. God tries to warn us, turn us
away from our tragic trajectory and do everything possible to restrain the
inevitable consequences until He must honor our choice when we totally
reject His authority. To those who turn from disobedience, He will not
withdraw His Spirit from. This embraces why God’s warnings are so severe.
God gets His vengeance on His enemies by transforming them into His
friends. I am coming to see reasonably something totally amazing – that the
kind of vengeance God is eager to inflict against sin and sinners is nothing
short of total annihilation – of sin that is – along with the total recovery of
sinners, to reflect the beauty, goodness, and love of their Creator. This is the
vengeance God uses and is what is described so beautifully in scripture. God
wants us to study vengeance and justice and judgment, yet not to think about
it in terms of retaliation. We trust God’s vengeance because none can offend
us. Cain hated Abel and was fearful of retaliation. Esau hated Jacob but
feared retribution from God. The impostor jews hated the Romans and
wanted a Messiah to destroy them. Israel hates Gaza. God’s people trust
God’s vengeance. We embrace the real truth about God’s attitude and
methods. As we are willing to embrace the startling truth that Jesus is the
exclusive revelation of God and His ways, and that God is no more violent
or threatening or retaliating than was Jesus when He lived here on earth –
only then can we begin to see with new eyes and perceive with our hearts,
that the way God gets vengeance and destroys His enemies is by what
comes out of His mouth. And when God speaks, what comes out of His
mouth is what is in His heart, which is love and only love. So, what of the full
demonstration of God’s wrath and vengeance? God will purposedly hide His
face from the perverse people in whom is no faithfulness. And here we know
the mystery of God’s vengeance. God releases people to the natural
consequences of their choices. In other words, God is compelled to respect
their determined choice to disconnect from Him. Yet doing so involves losing
His protection from every judgment and their accompanying consequential
inflictions of suffering, destruction, and death. When God hides His face, the
light of His countenance and His favor are hidden from them as well and
everything that follows they bring upon themselves, as even the word
portrays it as coming from God. When any refuse God’s involvement in their
life and resist cooperating with His plans, the only thing left is for Him is to
respect that choice to reject Him leaving them open to disaster. There is none
to blame for it all because the choice was made of one’s own free will.
Vengeance takes on a larger dimension that just wrath which simply involves
letting go of those rejecting God’s protection in their lives. Vengeance
includes God’s version of justice – which is always restorative, not punitive.
Thus vengeance in a strange way is how, at least in our jargon, God ‘gets
even’ with His enemies – by reversing all the curses brought into our lives by
sin and selfishness. Through God’s just righteousness He gets vengeance,
either by winning over His enemies and transforming them into friends, or
letting go of those persistently refusing His offers of love, grace and mercy
to the effects of their choices.
When there is no further possibility left inside to respond to His kindness, in
respect of freedom of choice, God withdraws His safeguard from the life
because the choices have demanded it. To do otherwise would be to impose
His will, which in reality would only destroy our ability to respond to His love
by reflecting it. God will never settle for anything less than friendship based
on love through appreciation of His beauty of character. It is impossible to
foster friendship when there is threat of retaliation should one choose to
withdraw. True love requires complete freedom to reject it without any threat
of punishment should one choose to do so. This is at the very core of the
nature of God’s government. God releases people to the disastrous results
of their choice to reject His authority as they chase after other options for
gods. But for those who are willing to cooperate, His vengeance is healing,
restoring, invigorating, and salvages all that is wrong. God’s vengeance and
retribution means He will come and save those who are open to Him. With
God, vengeance and wrath are not about retaliation and punitive justice but
about reversing the effects of evil and lies. The days of vengeance are the
days when He would be compelled to withdraw His protecting hand that had
shielded His recalcitrant people from destruction. He had to withdraw
because of their total rejection of His ways and His authority over their lives.
And when God withdraws, all hell breaks loose because that is what Satan
does when granted free access to humans separated from God. Satan hates
humans because we are designed to reflect God’s heart to the universe, so
he seeks to deface the image of God in every way he can and then gets us
to blame God for everything the enemy causes in us.
God’s vengeance is when His character is vindicated as light exposes all the
lies about Him and are completely discredited. This is God’s vindicative
judgment. God does not have to resort to violence, threats, fear, intimidation
or even deception in order to overcome the power of evil – all must be
exposed as fraudulent and baseless. All the slander against God’s character
will be seen clearly for what it really is so that trust in God and His ways can
be forever established without any lingering fear to contaminate it.
Throughout the history of rebellion against God’s government of love alone,
deceptions and insinuations about God’s motives causes many, even among
God’s followers, to have confused perceptions about things like truth, justice,
vengeance, and judgment. Because God has to communicate using our
language in order for us to understand and listen at all, He sometimes allows
His servants to say things about Him that are not completely exact in order
to get as much of the truth across as possible under the circumstances. This
may cause confusion, for it is like listening to a parent who must speak to a
young child at times in ways that may sound harsh or threatening or
descriptively adverse. This is why the Father says “come, let us reason” that
we not infer that which is not said. What is required is greater maturity and
understanding to discern the difference between expression in context and
actual truth about the character of our God. God is willing to risk being
misunderstood if it means potentially breaking through stubborn resistance
and immaturity to arouse a positive response in order to move His children
toward a more mature appreciation of the real truth about Him. It is called
reasoning! This is what we encounter all through scripture and helps explain
this symbolic interchange we find in the revelation of reality. This is why it is
crucial that we receive a love of the truth, so that we may have boldness in
judgment instead of terror when God’s vengeance comes forth. Terror of the
truth is the epitome of mental illness, which is exactly what sin causes. God’s
vengeance will throw down with violence every counterfeit concept that the
world has aligned with. This violence is a principle of God’s word. The bible
says Babylon will all collapse violently because violence is what it bases its
existence on. The kind of judgment those of Babylon have used to
manipulate and control everyone else will be what returns to haunt them
when their own fraud is exposed and those they have deceived and exploited
turn against them. This is the prophetic insights of Revelation, in particular
where we see that the victims of evil powers end up inflicting the violent
‘judgments’ against their exploiters rather than God imposing them directly.
God’s judgment is simply to expose and allow truth and love to be clearly
seen which in turn undermines and exposes all the slander and lies of false
systems of abuse. What happens as a result of this exposure is in turn
entirely dictated by the character of those reacting to the light. Because it is
impossible for us to see into the heart and know the true motives of anyone,
we must always defer judgment and vengeance to God, for only God can
bring in the light of truth in the most effective ways possible in hopes of
bringing as many as possible to saving repentance. This is why we are never
to hate our enemies but rather treat them as Jesus treated them and
instructed us to treat them, for hidden inside their heart may yet be a kernel
of hope that the Spirit of God may use to salvage them from control of the
dark spirits that deceive their minds and darken their hearts. By responding
with only love to our enemies, we may reflect the truth about God as we are
designed to do, thus giving God opportunity to draw them toward the light so
that if at all possible, through our witness to them as to the true nature of how
God feels about them in kindness, they may be won to repentance and be
saved. When evil, wickedness, and sin are at last completely annihilated with
truth and love, God’s vengeance will be accomplished.
Comments