by Frank Baugh

Created on: September 09, 2009   Last Updated: September 10, 2009

Judging from The Bible it should be an easy for God to send people to hell. God has a track record of being a cruel and vengeful God. God found no trouble killing men, women, children and infants as He commanded in the Midianite War found in The Bible in the Book of Numbers 31. Make no mistake about it, God, the Jealous God (Exodus 20:5), is a God that is easily angered, merciless and vindictive (Deuteronomy 4:23-25). To satisfy His vindictiveness with the Midianites God unleashed the armies of Israel on them slaughtering all, leaving no one alive except the virgin females that the soldiers got to keep as spoils of war.

I'm not making anything up here. It is all right there in The Bible. The job of the army of Israel under the leadership of Moses and then Joshua was to obliterate the indigenous people of the Promised Land so that their cultures would not infect the culture of Israel. It was full scale genocide. In story after story town after town of people were literally wiped out. Read it for yourself.

Read about God's hardening the heart of the Pharaoh resulting in the killing of the entire first born both of humans and animals of Egypt (Ex. 11:1-12:36). Did this God spare the child of adultery of David and Bathsheba? No! Did God spare Uriah the Hittite? No! Did God spare Uzzah for trying to steady the Ark of the Covenant when it was about to fall? No, God struck him dead!

Look to modern times. Did God spare six million Jews in World War II or the millions of victims of the Khmer Rouge? And don't you think of all those millions that millions of prayers were sent up and unanswered by God?

Make no mistake about it; God is not to be played with and is perfectly capable of casting people into hell. Hell wasn't even an Old Testament concept; it came with the New Testament. Good, kind, sweet, Jesus brought the incredible horror of eternal damnation for the multitudes with his teaching: Matthew 10:28 - "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Before the New Testament there was no hell of eternal damnation in lakes of fire, but with Jesus came the prospect of forever life in forever misery. Just imagine burning forever in a lake of fire and not being consumed, without relief! What kind of being could come up with such a punishment? Even we Americans are reasonably merciful with prisoners and criminals dealing with them humanely. We are certainly far more humane with those we conquer in war.

Fortunately God leaves a way out for mere weak mortals born with the already present, inescapable guilt of original sin. Believe in His Son. Unfortunately, it is His way or the highway. If you don't believe in the Son then you're on the highway to hell.

I like to believe that God is not as cruel as He is often portrayed in The Bible. I hope that the God of love is the rule instead of the God of retribution. I sincerely hope that sins are easily forgiven when confessed, and that God is really a loving figure that is as capable of forgiveness as I, as a father, am capable of loving and forgiving my children. If I as a mortal am capable of forgiving and loving others who aren't Christians, either because they weren't raised in a Christian culture, or because they were exposed to some hateful version of Christianity and rejected it, I should hope that if I as a mere mortal can do that much, then an all-powerful God is capable of much more love and forgiveness. I certainly hope so, and that is my faith that God is a God of love.

Learn more about this author, Frank Baugh.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.