Dear ABS, you seem to know pretty much everything.
I'd like to ask you the same question I was asked Saturday during the 2:00 PM to 2:00 AM Happy Hour at Babel's Bullets, Bait and Bistro.
It was a typical night at Babel's. I was hanging around hoping that Gunner Lee would maybe just doze off seeing as how he'd nearly finished his pack of Camels and had downed about nine fingers of his favorite sipping whiskey.
Tell ya what. If he had dozed off I was fixing to steal a kiss from his daughter but you know Gunner. Although the guy wuz a Marine - Hell, he still is - and if'n'he wanted to he could have dozed off during that attack at Guadalcanal if he hadn't slept for five or six days and required a few winks, but when his daughter is around, the guy never sleeps.
Anyways, I was well into my fourth car bomb and trying to talk the bartender Jackson Binx Beauregard into an arm rasslin' match when a guy at the bar - ol' what's-his-face, Darcy Ewell Pemberton, - suddenly began talking about how happy he was that the God of the Old Testament is not the same God of the New Testament.
Darcy pointed out that oncet, in The Old Testament God got righteously angry with 42 kids who made fun of the prophet Elisha and called him baldy and God sent 42 bears and them bears kilt ever one of them 42 kids.
Darcy Ewell said, "Well, Im sorry to have to say this but them lil' bastids got they just desserts. I'm just glad that God changed and He doesn't do stuff like that any more because today we's done a lot worse than what them lil' bastids did."
ABS, is Darcy Ewell right?
Your admirer,
Flummoxed in Fussels Corner.
Dear Flummoxed. No God has not changed. If He had changed then He would not be God.
The story you referenced is in 4 Kings in which Eliseus, (His real name, not Elisha) is mocked by 42 lil' bastids and then get they get taken out by 42 bears.
And we know that was true Justice because that is what God visited upon those lil' bastids for mocking His prophet.
But know these few crucial truths about God.
God is infinite Mercy. God is infinite Justice. God is possessed of infinite sovereign liberty, as the great Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, taught us.
The God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of The New Testament. What has changed - and this is crucial to remember - is the sacrifice offered to Him to appeal to His Mercy and stay Him from actualising His Justice against sinful man.
In the Old Testament, the Sacrifices to God were the unblemished oxen, goats, sheep and lambs because the Holocaust/Sacrifice to God had to use the very best animals available.
The purposes of the Old Testament Sacrifice/Holocausts were expiation, atonement/sin offerings, guilt offerings, peace offerings and thanksgiving.
But were those sacrifices/holocausts enough to stay His hand of Justice? No, because animals sacrifices were imperfect.
What would the perfect sacrifice be that would be enough to stay His hand of Justice most of the time?
With the Incarnation the Word became flesh and subsequently it is Jesus Christ who became the pluperfect Sacrifice that supplanted all of the old bloody sacrifices of the Old Testament.
On Calvary, Jesus was both Priest and Victim. He offered Himself to God to liberate mankind from slavery to Satan and to save mankind and it was Jesus who (Maundy Thursday) created His Priesthood through which He works to offer the UnBloody Holy Holocaust/Holy Sacrifice of the Mass/Holy Divine Liturgy to aid man to attain unto Salvation.
As Father Gavin, S.J. observed in 1901, when teaching those interested in The Catholic Church at The Sodality of The Immaculate Conception, Farm Street London, there are four parts to the Holy Holocaust;
1. The holocaust offered to God is an homage/offering to His sovereign greatness.
2. The sacrifice of expiation, offered to appease His Justice.
3. The sacrifice of importation to implore His bounty.
4. The Eucharistic sacrifice offered to thank Him for His bounty;
The Holy Holocaust is the sacrifice which the One True Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church offers to God as an offering to His greatness and power; a sacrifice of expiation to appease His Justice; a sacrifice of impetration to solicit His bounty; and a Eucharistic sacrifice offered to Him to thank Him for His bounty and all of His favors.
The Holy Holocaust demands a spirit of humility, the sacrifice of expiation a spirit of penance, compunction and penitence; the sacrifice of impetration, a spirt of fervor and submission; the Eucharistic sacrifice. a spirit of love and gratitude.
The God of The Old Testament and the God of the New Testament is the same.
What has changed is the worship of God.
What has changed is that the Son of God, the word become flesh, and who became for us the Pluperfect Sacrifice of Salvation on Calvary, is infinitely superior to the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament in the worship of God and so it only follows logically that He who is the perfect unbloody sacrifice to God is infinitely Holier and Pure and, thus, an infinitely more efficacious form of true worship than the animal sacrifice worship of the Old Testament worship of God.
It is the perfect unbloody sacrifice of Jesus, re-presented on our altars in The Holy Holocaust, which stays His hand of Justice.
Your friend is right, we are far worse sinners than those 42 lil' bastids and it is only the Holy Holocaust/Holy Mass/Divine liturgy which stays and delays His Justice because He desires that all of us repent of our sins and return to Him.
Were the Holy Holocaust to disappear from earth it would an unimaginable catastrophe of, literally, biblical proportions.
The Holy Holocaust is the single most important act taking place on earth at any moment in time yet our modern Popes, Prelates, and Priests, have, long ago forgotten that salvific and sanctifying truth.
How do we know that?
Look what they did to The Real Mass.
Lord have mercy.
ABS hopes to have helped you to put things into perspective and helped convince you that the God of The Old Testament is also the same God of The New Testament and that it is the worship of Him that is crucial difference.
It is the worship of God that has been perfected and do not let any man tell you they have a right to worship God as they please.
God became man and showed us how to wants to be worshipped, Flummoxed in Fussel Corner.
Rock on, brother.