The Wrath of God | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 2, 1875

The Wrath of God.

WHEN men enforce conclusions which they have drawn from the Scriptures without regard to the intimations of reason and experience, they greatly wrong the Scriptures. The Bible's transcendent power is in this: that it speaks home to the highest consciousness of man, and that all the deepest experience of the race bears witness to the truths it utters.

Thus, there runs through all the Scriptures a denunciation of divine wrath against sin. Out of this teaching, theologians have fashioned dogmas so horrible, so hopeless, so enshrouding the universe in gloom, that men's hearts rebelled and said, "It cannot be true." But the theologians have had for all protests, arguments, and appeals, a stereotyped answer: "The Bible says so." Now, what has been the consequences of thus attempting to array the Bible against the reason, the aspirations, the instincts of humanity? It has been, in part, to sustain the darkest views of the destiny of mankind; and also to provoke a reaction which may lead men to ignore all the element of penalty, and to substitute rose-colored fancies for the august realities of life. We who are accustomed to look upon the divine love in its aspects of gentleness and sweetness need to enter into that view which the Scriptures themselves present of the retributive element in the divine government. That tremendous word the wrath of God should stand for a tremendous reality. What is it?