WesleyGospel Ministries

Originally from here.

If you attend church at all, you will undoubtedly hear a thousand sermons on “Be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18) for every one sermon you hear preached on “Be ye angry, and sin not” (Eph. 4:26). This is a command! It is not a defense for a bad temper. It is not an excuse for an explosion of bitterness from your bruised ego for personal rejection. I am talking here of Holy Anger. God gets angry. “The anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses” (Exodus 4:14), “God is angry with the wicked every day” (Psalm 7:11). (If you must have a bumper sticker, try this last statement for a while – but be sure that you increase your insurance before you do so.)

The blessed preacher St. Paul walked down Main Street Athens, the intellectual capital of the world of his day. Acts 17:16 says in the sleepy Elizabethan English of the King James version, “His spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.” The Amplified says it this way, “Now while Paul was awaiting them at Athens, his spirit was grieved and roused to anger as he saw that the city was full of idols.” Such anger needs to come back to us today. I admit right here that I am downright angry. I am angry that Christ is wounded in the house of His friends.

Here Is An Example

Our home is less than 100 miles from Dallas – the “Athens” of the theologians. Therefore we are vulnerable to the students who come from the seminaries there, distressed, disgusted, and despondent over the low state of spirituality in their particular classes. A professor in one such seminary tells the preacher – boys, “Remember that preaching is now a profession, and not to be viewed or represented by a sweating evangelist in a sawdust-carpeted tent. Now the preacher has status like a doctor or a seasoned lawyer.” Be gone such idiocy! Preaching is not a profession – it is a passion! Paul sets the standard, “Woe unto me if I preach not the Gospel!” I am angry that these professors want the world’s smile on our holy calling. But no man called to the ministry needs a status symbol. He is, by the very nature of his calling, in the highest calling.

I am further angered by a statement by Bruce Cook – the former advertising agent for Coca Cola, who engineered the “I Found It” campaign. Here is his horrible comment, and it angers me: “Back in Jerusalem when the Church started, God performed a miracle there on the Day of Pentecost. They didn’t have the benefit of buttons and media, so God had to do a little supernatural work there. But today, with our technology, we have available to us the opportunity to create the same kind of interest in a secular society.”² This wretched interpretation makes me bristle. So buttons and modern media are as likely to start a Heaven-Born Holy Ghost Revival as was the Upper Room invasion from heaven? What is this but “Christian humanism”? WE are capable of producing the same thing as the Blessed Holy Spirit?

Homosexual “Christians”

I am angry when I read a letter from my friend and neighbor David Wilkerson announcing this near unbelievable perversion.

“Homosexuals now claim more than 50,000 members in their ‘all homosexual’ churches. The Metropolitan Community Church is one of many homosexual denominations springing up across the nation. I sent an observer to one of their annual ‘Holy Ghost’ conventions in Dallas, Texas. What unbelievable blasphemy!

“Each delegate, as they registered, was given a packet which included, among other things, two ‘boy’ magazines of all nude men and a list of all the gay bars in Dallas – so that delegates could leave the evening service, go to their selected bar, and connect with a lover for the night. And those delegates call themselves ‘ministers.’ How they did sing! They praised the Lord with enthusiasm; but their evangelist corrupted the Gospel beyond comprehension. He said, ‘Sure, Paul condemned men who changed the natural use and burned one toward another. But that’s not us. We didn’t change anything. We were born this way. So, come out of your closets. Be filled with the Holy Ghost, and enjoy your homosexuality!'”³

My anger over this is intensified when I read that the cutback in federal spending will cause some old folks to miss meals. Yet the same federal folks on the 5th of May, 1981, gave the Metropolitan Community (homosexual) Church $380,000 of our tax money to operate four resettlement centers for Cuban refugee homosexuals.⁴ (Just let the true Church of Jesus try to get the government to give us a dime to rescue men from an eternal hell!)

Clean Up America?

I am angry also when I hear preachers crying with great emotion, “Help me clean up America,” when they dare not try to clean up the Church – riddled as it is with carnality and sensuality. I am angry and grieved when preachers weep over the TV that their income is decreasing, though I’ve never seen them weep on TV over the millions of lost souls they address every week. The God on TV is an inoffensive, undemanding God, wanting to give but requiring nothing in exchange. There is no need to take up your cross and follow Him.

The “Mush God”

Nicholas Van Hoffman has a penetrating column on the “Mush God” of today. Read it friend, read it twice and maybe you will weep as he speaks of the gross representation of the Holy Deity. Here is Van Hoffman:

“The Mush God has been known to appear to millionaires on golf courses. He appears to politicians at ribbon-cutting ceremonies and to clergymen speaking the invocation on national TV at either Democratic or Republican conventions. The Mush God’s presence is felt during Brotherhood Week and when Rotarians come together. He is the lifeless deity President Carter was referring to when suggesting peace might come to the Middle East because the Egyptian president and Israeli prime minister both worshipped the Great Mushy One.

“The Mush God has no theology to speak of being a Cream of Wheat divinity. The Mush God has no particular credo, no tenets of faith, nothing that would make it difficult for believer and non-believer alike to lower one’s head when the temporary chairman tells us the Reverend, Rabbi, Father, Mufti, or So-and-So will lead us in an innocuous, harmless prayer, for this god of public occasions is not a jealous god. You can even invoke him to start a hookers’ convention and he/she or it won’t be offended.

“God of the Rotary, God of the Optimists Club, Protector of the Buddy System, the Mush God is the Lord of secular ritual, of the necessary but hypocritical forms and formalities that hush the divisive and the derisive. The Mush God is a serviceable god whose laws are not chiseled on tablets but written on sand, open to amendment, qualification, and erasure. This is a god that will compromise with you, make allowances and declare all wars holy, all peaces hallowed.”⁵

More Anger

My Holy Anger and burning indignation is fueled by articles like this from the pen of a “Wiseman” from the East – the Bhagwan Shree Ragneesh, writing from the Meditation Center that bears his name.⁶

“SEX – never repress it. Never be against it – rather, go deep into it with great clarity, with great love. Go like an explorer. Search all the nooks and corners of your sexuality and you will be surprised and enriched and benefited. Knowing your sexuality, one day you will stumble upon your spirituality [or get V.D.-LR] then you will become free. The future will have a totally different vision of sex. It will be more fun, more joy, more friendship, more a play than a serious affair, as it has been in the past. [The “serious affair” mentioned here must mean marriage-LR] Sex is just the beginning, not the end. But if you miss the beginning, you will miss the end also.”

What logic and what warning! Why not miss the end which is torment here and hereafter? I wonder what folks who have tried this teacher’s methods think about it. Does he have “revival crusades” with living, bright-faced “witnesses” telling of their rapturous emancipation from the “bondage of purity and a good conscience”?

Save Whose Children?

I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, “Save OUR children” bellow “Build more and bigger bombers.” That’s right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from “OUR” bombers! This does not jell.

I am angry that the pulpiteers can roar from their pulpits against political injustices, yet whisper about the wrong doings in their own fellowship – also that sin is called by other names. God has no mild views of sin, so let’s get back to biblical language. The soothsayers in the world are dangerous, but the “smooth-sayers” in the pulpit are equally dangerous. We now call iniquity, infirmity. Wickedness is just weakness. Adultery and fornication, just “having an affair.” Lust is called love. Sodomy is now being “GAY.” The Harlot is not called a Whore anymore, she is inoffensively named a “Call Girl.” These are not terms for every sermon, but they have some kind of intimidation and disgrace attached to them, which makes the preachers afraid to use them (and sinners afraid to hear them). But the Bible uses them!

I am angry when I hear preachers saying, “We had our best concert ever last week when the ‘ZYX Singers’ came to our church. The main auditorium was jammed with extra seats and we had to run extensions into the church hall for the overflow!” Yet, that same popular, prosperous church can comfortably seat its prayer meeting in just about the smallest room in the facility. What a slap in the face for a prayer-answering God! What a public declaration that the offering from the concert patrons is more important than prayer!

I am angry with people who withhold their own money from the Lord, but then turn His House into a Flea Market to raise church funds. And believe me, I am stirred, sick, and angry when I try to realize that 90% of Gospel preaching is to only 10% of the world’s population.

Mormons Get “More Men”

“Newsweek” for April 27, 1981, states:

“This year the Mormons will field more missionaries – about 30,000 in all – than any other church in the United States… their single purposeis to labor 16 hours a day,6 days a week, spreading the Gospel according to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. [Now notice the discipline attached to this effort.] The discipline imposed on Mormon missionaries is as unique as their message: no movies, television, or popular music; no phone calls to parents or girlfriends; no dates – and no going anywhere alone. Under this quasi-military regimen the L.D.S. missionaries have carried the faith across the U.S. into six continents.”

I am angry at this false zeal, disturbed and deeply troubled that we have to make so many Christian Youth Camps a miniature Olympics to entice kids to so-called Bible study. Dare we try to get kids away from TV, sports, etc., for a week of solid concentration on eternal things? It seems more correct with the emphasis on sports and church programs, and church leagues of bowling, baseball, etc., that we should be singing: “Onward Christian Sportsmen – forget about the war – look at all the prizes – you’re contending for!”⁷

I am angry when I think that the government will subsidize a science effort to find out where man came from, but will not give a dime to tell men where they are going. God! baptize us with a Holy Anger that will set us on a course of hell disturbing, heaven-enriching intercession!

All these sad events I have mentioned would be taken care of by a heaven-born, sin-convicting visitation of the Spirit.

I am angry at the devil’s monopoly of this age.

I am angry that the Church sleeps on.

I am angry that the Church, in many (and maybe most) cases, is an entertainment center. Lord have mercy! “Wilt Thou not revive us again, that Thy people may rejoice in Thee?”(Psalm 85:6)

1) Scripture quotation from The Amplified Bible © 1965 Zondervan Publishing House.
2) From “The Total Image”, 1980, by Virginia Owens, Eerdmans Publishing Company.
3) “The Coming Purge”, David Wilkerson Crusade.
4) “Your Newsletter”, First Church Of God, Fort Smith, AR.
5) From “Sources And Resources.”
6) “Time Magazine”, July 20, 1981.
7) Sung to the tune of “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

THIS IS SUCH STRONG PREACHING ON REPENTANCE.
INCREDIBLY ANOINTED! GOD BLESS YOU TIM!
–J.B.–

Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting.
–Ephesians 5:4 (KJV)–

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When your stars are baked
And your rivers fly
Do you ever believe you were stuck out in the, sky
When your castle breaks
And your feet are dry
Do you ever believe you were stuck out in the, sky
Do you believe, when you’re high
That your life is tried
Don’t you ever get stuck in the sky
Don’t you ever get stuck in the sky
Don’t ever get stuck in the sky, when you’re high
When your moon is fake
And your mermaids cry
Do you ever believe you were stuck out in the, sky
When your tunnel fades
And your guide is shy
Do you ever believe you were stuck out in the, sky
Do you believe, when you’re high
That your life is tried
Don’t you ever get stuck in the sky
Don’t you ever get stuck in the sky
Don’t ever get stuck in the sky, when you’re high
–System of a Down, “Peephole”–

This commission I have taken to my heart
To the world
(My heart)
In my heart
The curl is spent darkening through the day
But lasting for a thousand
And many more in reflections of You
More, many more
–Hopesfall, “In Reflection”–

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¹⁷ This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, ¹⁸ Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: ¹⁹ Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness,
to work all uncleanness with greediness.
–Ephesians 4:17-19 (KJV)–

Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.
–Hebrews 1:9 (KJV)–

Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
–Daniel 9:24 (KJV)–

CRY ALOUD, SPARE NOT, LIFT UP THY VOICE LIKE A TRUMPET, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their SINS! –Isaiah 58:1 (KJV)

O GENERATION OF VIPERS, who hath WARNED YOU to FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME!? –Matthew 3:7 (KJV)

WOE UNTO YOU, scribes and Pharisees, HYPOCRITES!   –Matthew 23:13 (KJV)

THOU CHILD OF THE DEVIL, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to PERVERT THE RIGHT WAYS OF THE LORD!? –Acts 13:10 (KJV)

His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb DOGS, they cannot BARK; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. –Isaiah 56:10 (KJV)   [The reverse implies that faithful preachers are like good sheepdogs that bark about sin and Hell to warn of danger.]

I AM FULL OF THE FURY OF THE LORD; I am weary with holding in.  –Jeremiah 6:11 (KJV)

OPEN REBUKE is better than secret love.   –Proverbs 27:5 (KJV)

Them that sin REBUKE BEFORE ALL, that others also may FEAR.   –1 Timothy 5:20 (KJV)

While Paul was waiting for them at Athens, HIS SPIRIT WAS GREATLY ANGERED when he saw that the city was full of idols.   –Acts 17:16 (AMP)

GODLY SORROW WORKETH REPENTANCE TO SALVATION not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter.   –2 Corinthians 7:10-11 (KJV)

THOU HAST LOVED RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND HATED INIQUITY; therefore God, even thy God, hath ANOINTED thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. –Hebrews 1:9 (KJV)

And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, A PREACHER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, bringing in THE FLOOD UPON THE WORLD OF THE UNGODLY. –2 Peter 2:5 (KJV)

THE RIGHTEOUS ARE BOLD AS A LION. –Proverbs 28:1 (KJV)

REBUKE THEM SHARPLY, that they may be sound in the faith. –Titus 1:13 (KJV)

When they heard this, THEY WERE PRICKED IN THEIR HEART, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?   –Acts 2:37 (KJV)

If THE WATCHMAN see the sword come, and blow not THE TRUMPET, and THE PEOPLE BE NOT WARNED; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but HIS BLOOD WILL I REQUIRE AT THE WATCHMAN’S HAND. So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and WARN THEM FROM ME. –Ezekiel 33:6-7 (KJV)

I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But HIS WORD WAS IN MINE HEART AS A BURNING FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay.   –Jeremiah 20:9 (KJV)

After my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I CEASED NOT TO WARN EVERY ONE NIGHT AND DAY WITH TEARS. –Acts 20:29-31 (KJV)

Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather REPROVE THEM. –Ephesians 5:11 (KJV)

GRIEVE not the Holy Spirit of God. –Ephesians 4:30 (KJV)

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THE EXISTENCE OF “HOLY SPIRIT ANGER”
PROVEN FROM THE SCRIPTURES

I AM FULL OF THE FURY OF THE LORD; I am weary with holding in.  –Jeremiah 6:11 (KJV)

His word was IN MINE HEART AS A BURNING FIRE shut up in my bones. –Jeremiah 20:9 (KJV)

He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire. –Matthew 3:11 (KJV)

Elymas the sorcerer (for that is what his name means) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul from the faith. Then Saul, who was also called Paul, FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT, looked straight at Elymas and said, “You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery! Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord! Now the hand of the Lord is against you! You are going to be blind for a time, not even able to see the light of the sun!” Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand. –Acts 13:8-11 (NIV)

Behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what INDIGNATION, yea, what fear, yea, what VEHEMENT DESIRE, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter.  –2 Corinthians 7:11 (KJV)

The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. –John 2:17 (KJV)

When he had looked round about on them with ANGER, being GRIEVED FOR THE HARDNESS OF THEIR HEARTS, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other. –Mark 3:5 (KJV)

Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth…As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.   –Revelation 3:16, 19 (KJV)

They were all FILLED WITH THE HOLY GHOST, and they spake the word of God with BOLDNESS.  –Acts 4:31 (KJV)

BE YE ANGRY, AND SIN NOT. –Ephesians 4:26 (KJV)

—

Leonard Ravenhill, Revival Praying, ch. 14: “Be Ye Angry.”

—. “Be Ye Angry And Sin Not” (Last Days Ministries, 1985).

Dr. John R. Rice, Why Preach Against Sin? (Sword of the Lord Publishers, 1946, 1985).

Benjamin Wadsworth, Fervent Zeal Against Flagrant Wickedness (1718).

Simeon Ashe, The Doctrine of Zeal Explained (1654).

John Downame, A Treatise of Anger (1609).

Isaac Ambrose, War with Devils, part 2, section 13.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, ch. 5.

Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections, p. 32.

June Hunt, How to Handle Your Emotions (Harvest House Publishers, 2008), ch. 1.

Gary Chapman, Anger: Taming a Powerful Emotion (Moody, 2015). The notes indicate that Hunt relied on an earlier version of this book.

A SHEEPDOG BARKING AT A FLOCK OF SHEEP

⁶ Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the tent of meeting and fell facedown, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them. ⁷ The Lord said to Moses, ⁸ “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.” ⁹ So Moses took the staff from the Lord’s presence, just as he commanded him. ¹⁰ He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?”¹¹ Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. ¹² But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.” –Numbers 20:6-12 (NIV)

He bids him speak to the rock, which would do as it was bidden, to shame the people who had been so often spoken to, and would not hear nor obey. Their hearts were harder than this rock, not so tender, not so yielding, not so obedient. He promises that the rock should give forth water (Numbers 20:8), and it did so (Numbers 20:11): the water came out abundantly…Moses and Aaron acted improperly in the management of this matter, so much so that God in displeasure told them immediately that they should not have the honour of bringing Israel into Canaan, Numbers 20:10-12…They said and did all in heat and passion; this is the account given of the sin (Psalms 106:33): They provoked his spirit, so that he spoke unadvisedly with his lips. It was in his passion that he called them rebels. It is true they were so; God had called them so; and Moses afterwards, in the way of a just reproof (Deuteronomy 9:24), calls them so without offence; but now it came from a provoked spirit, and was spoken unadvisedly: IT WAS TOO MUCH LIKE RACA, and THOU FOOL. His smiting the rock twice (it should seem, not waiting at all for the eruption of the water upon the first stroke) shows that he was in a heat. The same thing said and done with meekness may be justifiable which when said and done in anger may be highly culpable; see James 1:20…That the best of men have their failings, even in those graces that they are most eminent for. The man Moses was very meek, and yet here he sinned in passion; wherefore let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. That God judges not as man judges concerning sins; we might think that there was not much amiss in what Moses said and did, yet God saw cause to animadvert severely upon it. He knows the frame of men’s spirits, what temper they are of, and what temper they are in upon particular occasions, and from what thoughts and intents words and actions do proceed; and we are sure that therefore his judgment is according to truth, when it agrees not with ours. –MATTHEW HENRY

—

What was the offence for which Moses was excluded from the promised land? It appears to have consisted in some or all of the following particulars:

1. God had commanded him (Numbers 20:8) to take the rod in his hand, and go and SPEAK TO THE ROCK, and itshould give forth water. It seems Moses did not think speaking would be sufficient, therefore he smote the rock without any command so to do.

2. He did this twice, which certainly in this case indicated a great perturbation of spirit, and want of attention to the presence of God.

3. He permitted his spirit to be carried away by a sense of the people’s disobedience, and thus, being provoked, he was led to speak unadvisedly with his lips: Hear now, ye REBELS, Numbers 20:10.

4. He did not acknowledge GOD in the miracle which was about to be wrought, but took the honour to himself and Aaron: “Must WE fetch you water out of this rock?”

Thus it plainly appears that they did not properly believe in God, and did not honour him in the sight of the people; for in their presence they seem to express a doubt whether the thing could be possibly done. As Aaron appears to have been consenting in the above particulars, therefore he is also excluded from the promised land. –ADAM CLARKE

—

I believe the Bible allows for prophets, preachers, and evangelists to express righteous indignation in sermons, but only in a punctuated short little outburst, and only in such a way that communicates urgent warning and grief over sin, expressing God’s anger and grief over the sin of the people of God. Jeremiah was full of the fury of the Lord (6:11), Jesus was so grieved at the Pharisees that he gave them all an angry look right before he healed a person (Mark 3:5), and Paul rebuked Elymas with an angry outburst after being filled with the Holy Spirit and just before prophesying him into blindness (Acts 13:8-11). There’s also occasions of Isaiah, John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul saying what some people might consider to be pretty mean and hurtful things. But they are rebukes! Words of correction! Words of repentance! And they come from godly hearts filled with grief, holy anger, urgency, and warning:

CRY ALOUD, SPARE NOT, LIFT UP THY VOICE LIKE A TRUMPET, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their SINS! –Isaiah 58:1 (KJV)

O GENERATION OF VIPERS, who hath WARNED YOU to FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME!? –Matthew 3:7 (KJV)

WOE UNTO YOU, scribes and Pharisees, HYPOCRITES!   –Matthew 23:13 (KJV)

THOU CHILD OF THE DEVIL, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to PERVERT THE RIGHT WAYS OF THE LORD!? –Acts 13:10 (KJV)

Such outbursts could only come from the hearts of men that loved God with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strength; and who also loved their neighbors as themselves, and were not so hard-hearted as to just let them pass through life and go to Hell unwarned. Apathy and unbelief does not warn. Love, concern, and faith does. But sadness and weeping, it seems, is more near to the heart of God than his wrath, although both of them are attributes of God’s Spirit. What theologian would make the case that Hell was only created from the attribute of God’s sadness rather than mainly of his wrath? No Bible believing theologian would defend such a view. But it seems that the complication Moses experienced in Numbers 20:10-11 was that while he was sold out in his fear and love for the Lord; he was also constantly provoked by people who did not fear, nor believe, nor love God. And so, while Moses probably had many times like Isaiah, John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul, where he issued a loud rebuke with holy anger that came from the heart of God–this time it was different. And it seems that the difference was one of PURE HATE! Moses HATED these people; and he expressed his hate, as he operated in the gift of prophecy and miracles at the same time. God was about to do a miracle of providence and mercy and love; and Moses spoiled the event as he expressed his PURE HATRED for all of them, as he worked the miracle. He said: “’Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?’ Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff” (Num. 20:10-11). That’s where Moses messed up. He lost his composure and self-control, so much so, that he didn’t just REBUKE and WARN them as Isaiah, John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul did. Moses went further than rebuking and warning. Moses expressed hatred towards them–and while he was working a miracle of God’s provision–he said, “You rebels!” and then struck the rock twice like a baseball bat in a fit of anger. This shows us that he HATED these people, was FED UP with them, and COULDN’T STAND THEM ANYMORE!! –J.B.

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord:
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
–Isaiah 1:18 (KJV)–

In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
–Isaiah 6:1-2 (KJV)–

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DTS, “The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.”