It used to be that our friends and neighbours rejected the truthfulness of the Bible. Now they simply reject its beauty and goodness. These days, the claims of the Bible are not only viewed as false, they are viewed as reprehensible. Nowhere is this truer that in the Old Testament.
Famed scientist Richard Dawkins put it bluntly when he wrote, "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
How is a Christian to respond to that? Moreover, how are we who believe that all scripture is given by God, to learn to rejoice in what God has revealed to us in the Old Testament? As we study Deuteronomy we will see that the God of the Old Testament is not the most unpleasant character in all of fiction, rather he is the most glorious God of all truth.
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