The All-Consuming "God of Fire". Part II

This is the second part of the blog: “The All-Consuming God Of Fire”. To understand Part II we suggest reading Part I first, if you had not already done so.

When the apostle Paul declared in Hebrews 12:29 that the CHRISTIAN GOD, as embodied in the Father and the Son, is an all-consuming fire, he quoted directly from Deuteronomy 4:24. The statement is made by Moses in context of warning Israel against departing from Yehovah, the Almighty, their Covenant God.

“Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant [by direct implication, the laws of the Eternal] which he made with you … For Yehovah your God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God" [Deut 4:23-24].

In Hebrews Paul engages in exactly the same approach Moses employed when warning Israel. Paul, as Moses, gives warning to Christians against departing from the Almighty.

“See that ye refuse not Him that speaks. For if they [Israel] escaped not who refused him that spoke on earth [Moses], much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaks from heaven… [T]herefore let us [Christians] worship God acceptably with godly fear and awe" – why? – "because our God is indeed a consuming fire!” [Heb 12:25-29.]

The apostle Paul understood that the Eternal who forged a covenant [an agreement which incorporated specific laws] with ancient Israel, is precisely the same God that made a new covenant [agreement] with the “church” – the ecclesia, the body of Christ whom the Father would elect out of humanity to become the first fruits into the everlasting kingdom of the Eternal.

This new covenant – New Testament – also incorporated specific laws; the same laws he gave to his elect nation at Sinai. Being the same yesterday, today and forever, His character and moral values do not change. The essence of his holy being has forever remained constant. He is not a God that changes. He is not fickle, or a double-minded; a double-standard split personality being, craving PC-ness. “I am the ETERNAL, I change not …” [Mal 3:6].

Since HIS character does not change He cannot give a different set of laws to His elect, irrespective of the time epoch in which they are called to be His elect.

The specious argument presented by the Churchians that God's laws were “done away with” due to the death of Christ makes God out to be a changing God. He is not an unfair and freakish God. He is not CATATONIC, capricious and cranky with different standards for different people at different times.

Consider how ridiculous it is for God to expect the people of the Old Testament to obey the Law and yet, according to the traditional antinomianists, He does not require the New Testament people to obey ANY LAWS – despite having been given the power of the Holy Spirit to do so!

When you are a rebel against God you will contrive any perverse argument to justify your anti-law behavior in stubborn defiance of the Almighty Creator! “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king” [1Samuel 15:23].

There are an awesome number of ecclesiastics who in their rebellion have rejected the word of Yehovah [some occupying professorial positions in academia!] and their transgression is viewed by the Eternal as similar to that of witches, and Baal worshippers.

The laws which His people are to obey, to live by as a constant WAY OF LIFE, are always the same laws, whether in the old or the new covenant. Consider how insane the Kingdom of God will be when different groups of Churchians--Catholics, Protestants, Pentecostals, Adventists, Witnesses, Mormons, etc.--come up in the resurrection and some argue for and others against the Sabbath. Some will insist upon eating pork while others will condemn it.

Scripture makes it plain that God is not the author of confusion. The God of creation is not confused about His own laws and moral demands upon His people. He is not a divine trickster or huckster! He remains true to his own laws and demands that his people remain true to Him--His fixed character, His spiritual values, His eternal standards, His unchangeable ethics, His creation-bound ideals--forged by his eternal laws of holiness which is rooted in the essence of his own innate moral nature.

He formalized these eternal laws to His people Israel under the first covenant – i.e., don’t worship idols, keep the Sabbath holy, honor your parents, don’t murder, or commit adultery, or steal, or lie, or covet. All these laws continue under the New Covenant which the New Testament ecclesia kept, fully. Not a single law has been changed, or abrogated, or done away with, or by some absurd reasoning assumed to be “nailed to the cross”!

Ministers and churches who teach these fallacies engage in deception by vraisemblance; by a witch’s brew of half-truths, and pagan superstition which exploit people’s biblical ignorance!

Hebrews 12:28 states that we are to receive “a kingdom which cannot be moved”. It means there will be stability. Eternal Stability. And Eternal Stability is established by Eternal Law! Not just any law but the Law of the Eternal.

It is thus not without significance that the new covenant congregation was officially inaugurated by means of the manifestation of divine heavenly fire when "there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire and it sat upon each of them" (Acts 2:3).

This was a sign of the Eternal’s acceptance of the new covenant ecclesia and his approval of the 120 believers who observed the feast of Pentecost [Shavuot, the feast of weeks] in obedience to His command in the Leviticus 23. It was the very same day on which the Law was given to Israel!

Whilst the Eternal manifests His acceptance by fire He also manifest His rejection and wrath upon evil doers by fire -- a consuming fire. He uses His holy fire to destroy. The earliest manifestation of this is when He consumed Sodom and Gomorrah.

Gen 19:24 “The Eternal rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire... 28... and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.”

At individual level the Eternal also responds negatively by fire to destroy the rebellious and defiant. Consider Aaron’s two priestly sons who defied God's instructions pertaining to their priestly function. Ironically they brought “strange fire” – fire not ignited by Yehovah – and were in turn consumed, destroyed by the holy fire from Yehovah! [Lev. 10:1-2.] All the works of man is to be tried in the fire of God for purity and eternal value. Aaron's sons brought unholy fire of their own kindling. God executed them by fire for substituting the holy with the unholy.

1 Cor 3:11 “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; 13 Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. 14 If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. 15 If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. 16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelled in you? 17 If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.”

WHAT HAS ALL THIS TO DO WITH THE ALL-CONSUMING GOD OF FIRE?

Paul – the "apostle of grace"! – warns the blood-bought New Testament church: “For if we sin wilfully [break the Law perpetually and intentionally! (1 John 3:4 and 5:3)] after that we have received the knowledge of the truth [not just the grace!] there remained no more sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful looking for [expectation] of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries” [Heb 10:26-27].

The truth of God Almighty is so obscured by Luther’s “grace alone” fallacy that Churchianity and their intellectually hijacked and doctrinally deceived clergy and congregations cannot see what is plainly written. They refuse to acknowledge that the God of the New Testament is a God that will CONSUME WITH FIRE the sprinkled or dunked, baptised, confirmed, and catechised PEOPLE IN THE CHURCH who perpetually engage in bewitched lawlessness.

Anybody sinning wilfully after coming to a knowledge of the Eternal’s truth place themselves in the same category as His adversaries. And the consequence? FIGURE IT OUT AND FEAR! For “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” [Heb 10:31]. WHY?

Paul explains that He will “In flaming fire tak[e] vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” [2 Thes 1:8]. This implies that the gospel has LAWS TO BE OBEYED!

Clearly God expects obedience from His people. And, nothing needs to be obeyed if there be no law. What law could Paul possibly be referring to?

In Romans 7 he explained: “What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet” [Rom 7:7].

Which law said this? The tenth of the Ten Commandments. And, Paul says this law, the Ten Commandments, is “holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good” [Rom 7:12].

A million Roman Catholic and Protestant and Pentecostal theologians cannot make unholy what God made holy, and just, and good! Even if that would include Origen, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin a thousand times over---and every Pope!

But, being spiritually blinded and morally captured by satanic deception [Rev 12:9], Churchian dogma, and remunerative advantages, the “many” Christ alluded to [Mat 7:22] will continue with their doctrinal perversity the consequence of which is clearly articulated by John the Baptist:,

“But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees [the super righteous community of the time] come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance… the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree [every person] which brings not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.… he that cometh after me [Christ] is mightier than I… he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and with fire… He will thoroughly purge [cleanse perfectly] his floor [His harvest, the ecclesia] and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up [consume wholly and utterly] the chaff with unquenchable fire” [Mat 3:7-12].

Astounding as it might sound to some “grace-alone” filled ears, Christ is the one who will burn up the unrepentant law-breaking sinners. No unrepentant, unpurged people will be taken into His holy kingdom! What will be the point of that? It will result in the recreation of this filthy, vile, deceiving, lying, idolatrous, cursing, murdering, stealing, sexually perverse society all over again "in heaven" where liberalism, socialism, humanism, evolutionism, and atheism will resurface to the internal moral disintegration and eternal demolition of the kingdom's social structures and morality. Witness the Unites states of America!

Who will enter the kingdom and under what conditions?

“Blessed are they that do his commandments that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs [euphemism for Sodomites], and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loves and makes a lie” [Revelation 22:14-15].

From the text it seems that some newscasters, news stations, televangelists, and multimillion-dollar religious networks, have little chance of entering the kingdom of Christ. Not that they care anyway! They view such scriptures with utter contempt! Personal power, fame and fortune, social elevation, ego-massaging, driven by a host of psycho-pathological passions, compulsions and obsessions, or over-optimistic bootstrapism, swirl around in the mental and moral morass of the human psyche–--ever seeking gratification of the physical earthy senses.

That is why on a global scale the “all-consuming God of fire” will cleanse the earth – shortly – of its mountainous heaps of sin. And, He will do that by means of destroying by fire all things that defile, i.e., people who live in sin.

Peter, never lacking in bluntness, expresses this truth as follows: “But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the Day of Judgment and perdition [damnation and destruction] of ungodly men…10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” [2 Pet 3:7].

Yes, the Louvre and the Mona Lisa, the Vatican, its Library, its art treasures, Black Pete, the obscene pagan Pieta, La Scala, the British Museum, Covent Garden, the Met, The White House, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, ad infinitum, will all be burnt up by “the all-consuming God of fire” – including all those theological professors who, like the Pharisees of old, love to make and have pleasure in lying and deception, especially about the Bible!

Peter continues, 2 Peter 3:11: “Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness [defined as keeping the law of God] 12 Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?”

There is no theological argument that can be forged against such a transparent truth. What theologian can design the future course of this world and humanity without the blazing coming and burning presence of the “all-consuming God of fire?” Unless, of course, they engage--as they do--in verbal witchcraft, twist scripture, and employ sophistry, to mongrelize the message of Christ with deceptive oriental doctrine and occidental pagan philosophy.

Concluding this strophe from 2 Peter 3:13, "Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” – the spiritual ne plus ultra, the highest level of perfection, attained only by and through the redeemer of humanity, Christ!

Rev 14:9-10: “If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same… shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.”

Yes, the same Christ who died for the sins of all humanity will not spare those who in a spirit of witchcraft refuse to obey and continue to rebel and resist His divine rule through his holy law as given to Moses on Sinai and confirmed by Him personally in Matthew 5 as the moral base of the new covenant.

From before the beginning of human life, before the Cain-Abel tragedy, until after the completion of the bathos of the tragic human drama, beyond the kingdom, on into eternity, the Eternal reveals Himself as the all-consuming God of fire. He uses His fire in acceptance, to show favor and to consume His pleasant offerings, as he did with Abel. He also use His fire to destroy and consume the evil from before His holy countenance.

From eternity He had his seven flaming spirits – the seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God [Rev 4:5] – ministering to accomplish His everlasting purposes and His eternal, unfathomable objectives in regard to His glorious cosmic hosts, and mankind.

Indeed from eternity to eternity our Eternal God is “a consuming fire” who makes his “ministers a flame of fire” with the objective of burning into the minds of humanity the warnings He utters.

How you will experience the fire of the Eternal God will depend on three vital factors: the patient endurance of the saints, the keeping of the commandments of God, and the faith of Jeshua [Rev 14:12].

Escaping the eternal fire of the Almighty is a choice to be exercised by those who have been given the choice. It’s your life. It’s your future. It’s your eternity. And, as always: It’s your choice!