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The wrath of God

By Prophet (Dr.) Sunday Nwabeke
28 October 2018   |   4:21 am
The idea that God gets angry at times should not be foreign to anyone familiar with the scriptures. Jesus was the express image of the invisible God and He experienced anger.

Prophet Sunday O. Nwabeke

The idea that God gets angry at times should not be foreign to anyone familiar with the scriptures. Jesus was the express image of the invisible God and He experienced anger. We have been created in the image of God and we get angry. However, it is written, “If you get angry do not sin and let not the sun go down upon your anger.” God’s anger is limited by His mercy. In wrath, He remembers mercy, so that we are not consumed. God does not get bitter. He expresses “Love” in such a way that He follows it with forgiveness and restoration.

All of His ways are perfect and the ways in which He expresses displeasure are within the parameter of His love and forgiveness. Yet, to say He does not experience anger or that His anger is somehow not a personal manifestation of His divine nature is a clear dismissal of the scriptures. Sometimes, little children would prefer a God Who never gets angry, so we create Him in our imagination. The enemy wants to portray a God that is always angry, so he creates Him in his own fallen image. The balance is revealed in the scriptures, and through the things that are made.

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 
(Rom 1:18-20)

The word most often translated, as “wrath” is “orge”, from the root “orgao” meaning “to swell”, including a meaning of “reaching forth” and by implication “passion”. It is a swelling as if to burst. You could say the patience of God waits but as the cup of iniquity fills, His personal reaction against sin swells until a point when He reaches forth. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness”.  Swelling is not the punishment itself, but rather a personal emotion of God. You could liken it to the emotion parents feel, when they instruct and correct a child repeatedly over a certain issue, until action must be taken- often for the child’s protection, but not always. The house belongs to the parents, and the children must live within certain preferences of the parents. Our house belongs to God and we are learning to live within His good pleasure- both for our own good and for His joy. After His healing of the man with the withered hand, Jesus experienced “bitterness” in the temple, when He beheld the hardness of the Pharisees hearts. We all know Jesus experienced “anger” as He drove the moneychangers out of the temple. “My Father’s house is a house of prayer for all people, but you have made it a den of thieves.”

In the Old Testament, God surrounded Himself with Levites, “so that there would be no wrath on the congregation (Nu 1:53)”.  The Levites were charged with knowing, discerning and teaching the people what constituted acceptable service and offering in God’s house, so the people could in turn keep their charge as a nation separated to worship. In one instance, God’s punishment was being inflicted upon the people because of a certain violation. One of the Levites stopped the punishment by becoming an intercessor. He became an intercessor by sharing God’s emotion about the infraction. 

Num 25:11 “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned away My wrath from the sons of Israel in that he was jealous with My jealousy among them, so that I did not destroy the sons of Israel in My jealousy. 
Covenant Prayer Life Assembly, 6, Unity Crescent, off Olatunji Street, Ladipo, Oshodi, Lagos. Contact us on 08034849689, or e-mail: Covenantradiotv@gmail.com   

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