“Yet he also is wise, and will bring evil” (Isaiah 31:2).
Can God create evil? What about Isaiah 45:7? Or is this verse considered among so many others just the words of a fallible redactor and not a true reflection of God?
Which leads me to this question; did God create a literal hell?
There are aspects of God’s character and work that the major Christian religions of inclusivism will not allow you to consider seriously. His holiness. His wrath. His creation of eternal punishment. Here is the new rule governing inclusivistic faith and practice to be preached high and loud: one cannot question men’s goodness and sincerity in their religious practices nor men’s convictions of God being tolerant of their variety of self chosen ways to establish righteous merit.
It didn’t use to be this way. Historical evangelicalism, encompassing Church of England bishops to noncomformist ministers to various protestant pastors, believed God forthrightly warned all people, from the drunken murderers to angelic churchgoers, about evil and eternal punishment.
But does the human heart care to listen to this? The natural heart hasn’t changed since the days of Noah.
But William Tyndale, the one who brought to us our English Bibles, talked over and over about being “safe”, about a gospel of deliverance that exalts God alone.
Today, religious inclusivism dominates much of Western thinking. Hell is passé for the majority of Christian intellects.
And I wonder what Christians in the West think they are safe from?
Maybe, they laugh among themselves, “We are finally getting close to the point where we are safe from all those historical evangelicals.”
But steeped in words from Isaiah to Jesus, I am thinking very soberly and humbly about clear warnings and about the one ark of safety.
If there is one fundamental act that brings down the eternal wrath of the Father, it is the refusal of religious mankind to accept in this life the light offered by His Son that we might be safe. Do Christian inclusivists really care what the Son went through exclusively on our behalf?
The English word “safe” is one of my most cherished words in the Bible.
“The trembling sinner feareth
That God can ne’er forget;
But one full payment cleareth
His memory of all debt;
Returning sons He kisses,
And with His robe invests;
His perfect love dismisses
All terror from our breasts.”
Jesus in Idaho Falls 
I believe the “evil” God will bring upon unrighteousness is better understood as being His holy wrath.
I don’t know about you, but it was a message preached about hell that helped me recognize my need for a Saviour. Any more, some churches (many/most churches?) simply preach about prayer, love, finances, relationships, service, etc., without actually sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His victory over sin in our lives through repentance and salvation by grace through faith from eternal damnation. I’m afraid too many churches today are simply loving people straight to hell.
I’m actually a big fan of the God of the New Testament. Wrath, jealousy and all. But as a Mormon, I of course don’t buy the idea that He created hell, or evil itself.
Is sin sourced in God? No, I can’t accept that because of what scripture says. But that God uses disaster/war/hell/eternal separation to punish evil? Yes, words of the prophets and apostles and the Savior indicate that God is sovereign over evil.
Seth, there are probably a number of evangelical Christians uncomfortable with the God of the old covenant. To be under the old covenant that demands impeccable perfection – this would rattle anyone.
But the God of the old covenant drives a person to the God of the new covenant . . . the same God of continuity. I can see that even in Isaiah 31.