Revenge - God Style

What does God do to those who have become His enemies? Some people imagine a deity who is quick to anger and will smash the gavel before smashing them to guilty pieces. I'd like to suggest otherwise. Isaiah 1:24-26  unearths a fine description of how God's wrath. First He says, “I will take revenge on you, my enemies, and you will cause me no more trouble. I will take action against you. I will..." He will what?  "I will purify you just as metal is refined, and will remove all your impurity."  He will do what????  No way.  His revenge is to refine His enemies? Purify His enemies? What else will this awesome God do to those who rebel against Him? "I will give you rulers and advisers like those you had long ago. Then Jerusalem will be called the righteous, faithful city.” What on earth was Isaiah talking about here?  Did he maybe not understand God's character? And if this is how God handles unruly children then does that mean that my enemies won't get what I think is coming to them?

Isaiah follows up with,"So now, listen to what the Lord Almighty, Israel’s powerful God, is saying: Because the Lord is righteous, he will save Jerusalem and everyone there who repents." But what about those who don't repent? What about those who refuse God's love and mercy and compassion?  Are they really free to resist God's advances or will He command them to bow and scrape beneath His throne before pushing the eject button? Verse 28 says, "But he will crush everyone who sins and rebels against him; he will kill everyone who forsakes him." Ouch. "See Stacie, God doesn't mess around!" you say,"God is more like Vito Corleone, you know, the Mafia don that no one dares to cross." Remember, just when you get to digging pretty deep in the Bible's winding and exciting corriders and things begin to look pretty bad for God, look out and keep reading!

Verse 29 continues, "You will be sorry that you ever worshipped trees and planted sacred gardens. You will wither like a dying oak, like a garden that no one waters. Just as straw is set on fire by a spark, so powerful people will be destroyed by their own evil deeds, and no one will be able to stop the destruction." In other words, we are our own worst enemy.  We have two alternatives here,one being God will rocket launch you straight to Hades, or two, He won't. If one believes the former, then logically one might suspect that God really wasn't as loving as He made Himself out to be when He walked the earth some 2,000 years ago. And to just throw a little enigmatic monkey wrench in the middle of it all, yes, I do believe God will take an active part in the destruction of evil but let me save that for another day;)