Ray Comfort Is Making My Argument for Me!
In his
latest post,
Ray Comfort disagrees with Dawkins’s famous quip about the god of the
Old Testament being “the most unpleasant character in all fiction”.
Specifically, he takes Dawkins to task for excluding the god of the
New Testament:
The God of the New Testament is just as offensive to the
ungodly as the God of the Old Testament, because they are One in [sic]
the same.
Look at His terrible New Testament judgments: He killed a husband and wife, simply because they told one lie (see Acts 5:1-11). His “wrath” abides on every unbeliever for their sins (see John 3:36, Ephesians 5:6). He will punish the unsaved with a fearful “indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish” (Romans 2:8-9), and warns that He is going to be “revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (see 2 Thessalonians 1:8).
He is so angry at this world He calls us His enemy (see James 4:4) and promises to “shake not only the earth, but also Heaven” in His wrath (Hebrews 12:26). Our God is “a consuming fire” (see Hebrews 12:29) and His justice will cause some to gnaw their tongues in pain (see Revelation 16:10). He is so serious about sin He will cast all liars into the lake of fire (see Revelation 21:8).
Okay, so the NT God is just as mean and nasty as the OT one.
Actually, no, he’s not:
If you still want to paint the Old Testament God as been mean and the New Testament God as being nice, please realize that the God of the New Testament proclaimed the death sentence on every man, on every woman and on every child of the human race. Every single human being will die because they have violated God’s Law (see Romans 5:12, 6:23).
The god of the New Testament is nastier, since he punishes people
forever in Hell. At least the OT god was polite enough to stop
torturing people once they were dead.
With opponents like Comfort, who needs allies?
(Matt D. says almost the same thing as I do. Except he said it to Ray directly.)
You are tagged! 🙂 Play only if you want to play, of course.
I do think there’s something in the way the Old Testament is written that encourages you to take it literally (really a pillar of fire, really a plague of frogs) and something in the way Jesus speaks, largely because of his use of parables, in the New Testament that encourages you to take the statements figuratively.
It should also be pointed out that almost all the passages cited are from Paul, or later, and not presented as quotes from Jesus. Drawing the line between the Old Testament and the New is the wrong place to draw the line. You can find nasty quotes in the gospels, too, though. They are rarer, and they seem, to my ear, jarringly out of place with the general sentiment expressed.
Paul, I’m afraid you’re being far too erudite and reality-based for the likes of Ray Comfort. The man once claimed that bananas were an argument against evolution, fer cryin’ out loud.