 So one of the peculiar claims of Christianity is that it is a new and improved version of what came before. The Christian Bible has a book called The Book of Hebrews, and there it trumpets the idea that they now have a better priesthood, a better tabernacle, a better covenant than the old pale shadows of what they call the Old Testament. Of course, it is patently absurd to suggest that there was anything defective about God's original revelation. In the Book of Psalms chapter 19, it says, The Torah of God is perfect, and we all know that you can't improve on perfect. One assertion that is frequently heard is that the God we encounter in the so-called Old Testament is angry and vengeful, but that in the Christian Bible we encounter a God of love. It's important to note that God never speaks in the Christian Bible. Most people are not aware of this. In the Torah, we see on virtually every page the Almighty speaking to Moses, the most common verse in the five books of Moses, as the Yadab, Hashem, and Moshe, and more. God spoke to Moses saying, speak unto the children of Israel. Literally every page has us being told that God is speaking. The prophets themselves often would say, thus says the Lord. So throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, it is God that is speaking. However, in the pages of the Gospels and in the letters of the Christian Bible, especially the letters of Paul, this never happens. We never see God speaking. We see Jesus speaking a lot in the Gospels, and most Christians believe that Jesus was God. So we'll have to look there for comparison. Now it's true that Jesus preaches about love, but we have to remember that teachings like Love Your Neighbor as Yourself were already taught in the Torah. It's important for our discussion tonight to pay attention to the fact that we should not have a one-dimensional view of Jesus. Throughout the Gospels, he repeatedly threatens people who will not accept him or his teachings that they will be eternally damned, cast into the furnace of hell, will they will burn in an unquenchable fire and they'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This comes up frequently in this speeches of Jesus. The book of Jude teaches that burning in hell is eternal. It's not just burning in hell for a few months or a few years. It is eternal damnation. And it's interesting that there are no explicit references. To an eternal damnation in hell anywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures, but it comes up numerous times in the Christian Bible and 75% of the times that it comes up, it's coming straight out of the mouth of Jesus. I should mention that this theme of eternally burning in hell is so much emphasized in the Christian Bible that many former Christians, meaning many people who've left Christianity are traumatized by this idea and years later, years after renouncing their faith in Jesus, they are still terrified about the possibility that they're going to end up in hell. We find as well a famous parable in the Gospels in the 19th chapter of the Gospel of Luke where the character in the parable representing Jesus says the following, all these enemies of mine who would not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence. So to think about Jesus as just a hippie that taught love and peace is really a misunderstanding of who Jesus actually was. Now for sure we see God punishing evil behavior in the Torah, in the Tanakh. But how would we feel about a God who never held people accountable? How would we feel about parents who never held their children accountable? Now the Torah seems to prescribe the death penalty for countless sins. It often freaks people out. They open up the five books of Moses, you do that, you do that, you do that. You're going to be surely put to death. Surely put to death. It sounds like someone is obsessed with killing people. But it's important to understand that for the most part, this statement is for effect and to teach us that certain behaviors are terribly wrong. In reality, the judicial laws of evidence made it practically impossible to administer capital punishment. Talmud actually teaches that if a court executed one person in 70 years, it was a bloody, murderous court. Finally, it's important to remember that the Torah describes the Almighty as incredibly loving, long-suffering and patient. One Christian commentary to the Bible actually counted nearly 200 such references in the Hebrew Scriptures. For example, Exodus chapter 34, verse 6 says, The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in mercy and faithfulness. The prophets also repeatedly expressed the idea that God has no pleasure in punishing the wicked, but he's much preferring that people will turn from their evil ways and live. That is ultimately God's agenda. So to make the facile comparison between a vicious, vengeful God in the Hebrew Scriptures to a peaceful, loving God of the Christian Bible is simply an ill-founded comparison.