This God withheld the rain—caused the famine—saw the fierce eyes of hunger—the wasted forms, the white lips, saw mothers eating babes, and remained ferocious as famine.
It seems to me impossible for a civilized man to love or worship or respect the God of the Old Testament. A really civilized man, a really civilized woman, must hold such a God in abhorrence and contempt.
But in the old days the good people justified Jehovah in His treatment of the heathen. The wretches who were murdered were idolators and therefore unfit to live.
According to the Bible, God had never revealed Himself to these people and He knew that without a revelation they could not know that He was the true God. Whose fault was it, then, that they were heathen?
The Christians said that God had the right to destroy them because He created them. What did He create them for? He knew when He made them that they would be food for the sword. He knew that He would have the pleasure of seeing them murdered.
As a last answer, as a final excuse, the worshipers of Jehovah said that all these horrible things took place under the "old dispensation" of unyielding law, and absolute justice, but that now, under the "new dispensation," all had been changed—the sword of justice had been sheathed and love enthroned. In the Old Testament, they said, God is the judge—but in the New, Christ is the merciful. As a matter of fact, the New Testament is infinitely worse than the Old. In the Old there is no threat of eternal pain. Jehovah had no eternal prison—no everlasting fire. His hatred ended at the grave. His revenge was satisfied when his enemy was dead.
In the New Testament, death is not the end, but the beginning of punishment that has no end. In the New Testament the malice of God is infinite and the hunger of His revenge eternal.
The orthodox God, when clothed in human flesh, told His disciples not to resist evil, to love their enemies, and when smitten on one cheek to turn the other; and yet we are told that this same God, with the same loving lips, uttered these heartless, these fiendish words: "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels."
These are the words of "eternal love."
No human being has imagination enough to conceive of this infinite horror.