Wrath of God

“ Of course we must not misconceive the character of this wrath. We must not import into our thoughts of it all that we can borrow from our experience of man's anger—hastiness, unreason, intemperate rage. The wrath of God is no arbitrary, passionate outburst; it is not, as wrath so often is with us, a fury of selfish resentment. "Evil shall not dwell with Thee," says the Psalmist; and in that simple word we have the root of the matter. The wrath of God is, as it were, the instinct of self-preservation in the Divine nature; it is the eternal repulsion, by the Holy One, of all evil. ”

“ God is not altogether such a one as themselves, though they may imagine him to be so. The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now lit, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whetted, and held over them, and the pit hath opened its mouth under them.
5. The devil stands ready to fall upon them, and seize them as his own, at what moment God shall permit him. They belong to him; he has their souls in his possession, and under his dominion. ”

“ The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose. ’Tis true, that judgment against your evil work has not been executed hitherto; the floods of God’s vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the mean time is constantly increasing, and you are every day treasuring up more wrath; the waters are continually rising, and waxing more and more mighty ”

“ When the sins of a people reach up to heaven, the wrath of God will reach down to the earth. ”

“ The day that begins in mercy may end in judgement. God is lent so long as our sins will let him quiet ; but know that God hath via of wrath filled with indignation, vessels of wrath fitted for destruction If God's mercy do not draw you to repentance, God's judgements will drive, you to destruction; the sea of damnation shall not be sweetened with a drop of compassion.
Oh! sinners, either seek out a favour to deliver you from the wrath of God, or else find out a shoulder to bear you up under the wrath of God. ”

“ But how aggravated the guilt of those who under such circumstances forsake the way of the Lord—cut of the entail of mercy and entail a curse on their posterity—shut up the kingdom of heaven against their own offspring; neither going in themselves, nor suffering those who are entering to go in?
Lost to the fear of God, such hardened sinners may cry peace, but there is no peace to them! It concerns them to look to themselves, for evil is before them! A descent from pious ancestors will not turn away the wrath of God, from those who harden themselves in sin. ”

“ I see all the billows and waves of God's righteous wrath—His wrath against my sins—His wrath which should have consumed me, soul and body, in hell, throughout a dreary eternity,—I see them all rolling over the Man who stood in my stead, who represented me before God, who bore all that was due to me, with whom a holy God dealt as He should have dealt with me. I see inflexible justice, holiness, truth, and righteousness dealing with my sins, and making a clear and eternal riddance of them. ”

“ Repent and reform, lest my fury come forth like fire, which it is now ready to do, as that fire which came forth from the Lord and consumed the sacrifices, and which was always kept burning upon the altar and none might quench it; such is God's wrath against impenitent sinners, because of the evil of their doings. Note, 1. That which is to be dreaded by us more than any thing else is the wrath of God ”

“ But the wrath of God cannot mean anything like this; because, when his wrath burns the fiercest, he is still ever ready to forgive all who repent and turn from evil. Nay, he even entreats and beseeches men to be reconciled to him, that his anger may be turned away. ”

“ Because the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. The gospel is a revelation made to the world in view of a given situation, and the most prominent and threatening {62} element in that situation is the impending wrath of God. ”

“ Sin, then, and man for sin, is the object of the wrath of God. If the object of the wrath of God, then is his case most dreadful; for who can bear, who can grapple with the wrath of God? Men cannot, angels cannot, the whole world cannot. ”

“ We want to feel after the people and hunt them up; and we want the wrath of Brigham, and the wrath of Heber, and the wrath of all the men and woman on earth that are right, and the wrath of Joseph, and the wrath of Michael, and the wrath of Raphael, and the wrath of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the wrath of Almighty God and of all the Gods in eternity to burn against those that will sin. ”

“ In that pure upper world He sits whose wrath it is. From that stainless sky of His presence its white lightnings will fall, "upon all godlessness and unrighteousness of men," upon every kind of violation of conscience, whether done against God or man ”

“ The wrath of God, scattered among the proud, will humble them, and break them, and bring them down. If he casts abroad the rage of his wrath, as he will do at the great day and sometimes does in this life, the stoutest heart cannot hold out against him. ”

“ My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Let us thus deprecate the wrath of God more than any outward trouble whatsoever, and always take heed of treasuring up wrath against a day of affliction. 2. That which he desires as the greatest good, and which would be to him the restoration of all good, is, the favour and grace of God. He prays, (1.) That God would pity him, and look upon him with compassion; he thinks himself very miserable, and misery is the proper object of mercy. Hence he prays, "Have mercy upon me, O Lord; in wrath, remember mercy, and deal not with me in strict justice." ”

“ Sin, long continued in, will kindle the divine wrath, and make it flame out against sinners. [2.] God's wrath will discover itself in its righteous resolution to destroy the impenitent; he will swear in his wrath, not rashly, but righteously, and his wrath will make their condition a restless condition; there is no resting under the wrath of God.
IV. What use the apostle makes of their awful example, v. 12, 13, &c. He gives the Hebrews a proper caution, and enforces it with an affectionate compellation. ”

“ The Old Testament abounds with passages of similar import, and many are found in the New Testament. But let us examine carefully the kind of wrath and anger to which the Lord may be provoked. It cannot be such wrath as men and devils feel. In Rev. 12:12 we read these words: "The devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time."
We can not, we dare not, think for a moment that the word wrath, when spoken of God, means the same as when spoken of the devil. The devil's wrath implies a feeling in him to do all the evil and mischief he can. ”

“ Every word here speaks terror. It is not only the justice of God that is engaged against him, but his wrath, the deep resentment of provocations given to himself; it is the fury of his wrath, incensed to the highest degree; it is cast upon him with force and fierceness; it is rained upon him in abundance; it comes on his head like the fire and brimstone upon Sodom, to which the psalmist also refers, Ps. xi. 6. On the wicked God shall rain fire and brimstone. There is no fence against this, but in Christ, who is the only covert from the storm and tempest, Isa. ”

“ II. That the active outgoings of the sinful principle in man call for the infliction of Divine vengeance.—The wrath of God is not a malignant, unreasoning passion, like that with which we are familiar among men. ”

“ If the person utterly fall under this charge, as not being able to wrestle with and overcome this wrath of God, then despair, horror of hell, rage, blasphemy, darkness, and damnable anguish, immediately swallow him up, and he lieth for ever and ever in the pains of hell, a monument of eternal vengeance. ”

“ Every word of it was for him. Against his sin, foul and secret, the whole wrath of God was aimed. The preacher’s knife had probed deeply into his disclosed conscience and he felt now that his soul was festering in sin. ”

“ The wrath of God for men; for sin stands already condemned by the law; and the judgment is, that they who refuse the Lord Jesus Christ shall have this wrath of God for ever lie and abide upon them; for they want a sacrifice to pacify wrath for the sin they have committed, having resisted and refused the sacrifice of the body of Christ. ”

“ But I must suffer all things, in the pangs of flame, sick and sorrowful, lamenting here my lost possessions, which once I owned, while still my home was in the heavens. Will the Eternal grant us ever again a home and dwelling in the heavenly kingdom, as He did of old?"
(ll. 279-297) So wailed God's adversaries, as they burned in hell. God, the Lord, was moved to wrath against them for their blasphemy. Wherefore should every living man, whose heart is good, resolve to banish sinful thoughts and loathsome evil. ”

“ Even the light of nature teaches that in extraordinary judgments the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against some extraordinary sins and sinners. Whatever evil is upon us at any time we must conclude there is a cause for it; there is evil done by us, or else this evil would not be upon us ”

“ IV. All this comes from God's wrath, not allayed, as sometimes it has been, with mixtures of mercy. This is the fountain from which all these calamities flow; and this is the wormwood and the gall in the affliction and the misery, which make it bitter indeed (v. 3) : I will send my anger upon thee. Observe, God is Lord of his anger; it does not break out but when he pleases, nor fasten upon any but as he directs it and gives it commission. ”

“ They expose themselves to the wrath of God, for he is angry at the voice of those that thus lie unto him with their mouth and flatter him with their tongue, and is displeased at their dissimulation, and destroys the works of their hands, that is, blasts their enterprises, and defeats those purposes which, when they made these vows, they were seeking to God for the success of. ”

“ Nay, they shall themselves be set aside in the dissolution of all things; for the damned sinners in hell shall not be allowed their light, for God himself will be their everlasting light, Isa. lx. 19. Those that fall under the wrath of God in that day of wrath shall be cut off from all comfort and joy, signified by the darkening not only of sun and moon, but of the stars also. ”

“ They are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath of God, that is expressed in the torments of hell: and the reason why they do not go down to hell at each moment, is not because God, in whose power they are, is not at present very angry with them; as he is with many miserable creatures now tormented in hell, who there feel and bear the fierceness of his wrath. Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on earth, yea doubtless with some who may read this book, who, it may be, are at case, than he is with many of those that are now in the flames of hell. ”

“ If the blood of Christ be sprinkled upon our consciences, it will be our protection from the wrath of God, the curse of the law, and the damnation of hell, Rom. ”

“ By the sore disease the Divine hand grasps him, keeps him down. The emaciation of his body bears witness against him as an object of wrath. Yes; God is his enemy, and how terrible an enemy! He is like a savage lion that tears with his teeth and glares as if in act to devour. With God, men also, in their degree, persecute and assail him. People from the city have come out to gaze upon him. Word has gone round that he is being crushed by the Almighty for proud defiance and blasphemy. Men who once trembled before him have smitten him upon the cheek reproachfully. ”

“ Wickedness shall burn as the fire; the displeasure of God, incurred by sin, shall consume the sinners, who have made themselves as briers and thorns before it, and as the thickets of the forest, combustible matter, which the wrath of the Lord of hosts, the mighty God, will go through and burn together. ”

“ But surely these two thoughts of God’s love and God’s wrath are not inconsistent, for His wrath is His love, pained, wounded, thrown back upon itself, rejected and compelled to assume the form of aversion and to do its “strange work”—that which is not its natural operation—of punishment. When we ascribe wrath to God, we must take care of lowering the conception of it to the level of human [280] wrath, which is shaken with passion and often tinged with malice, whereas in that affection of the Divine nature which corresponds to anger in us, there is neither passion nor wish to harm. ”

“ Should any, within or without the company of the Hands of the Cause of God disobey, and seek division, the wrath of God and His vengeance will be upon him, for he will have caused a breach in the true Faith of God. ”

“ He swore solemnly in his wrath, his just and holy wrath; but let not men therefore swear profanely in their wrath, their sinful brutish wrath. God is not subject to such passions as we are; but he is said to be angry, very angry, at sin and sinners, to show the malignity of sin and the justice of God's government. That is certainly an evil thing which deserves such a recompence of revenge as may be expected from a provoked Deity. ”