Fear God, Fear Jesus
Do you have the courage to read all 68 verses of Deuteronomy Chapter 28? If you read it in the NIV, you will see the heading, "Blessings for Obedience" preceding the first 14 verses. Then the heading "Curses for Disobedience" preceding verses 15-68.
Verse 15, "However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you."
In the following 53 verses of curses, Moses promises God will send all the most horrible plagues, diseases, extreme weather events, and enemies to destroy his 'Chosen People' that Moses can think of, including a siege of every city so intense that the Israelite parents will eat their children. He describes in graphic detail how the fathers will eat their children in secrecy, and the mothers will eat their afterbirth and infant children in secrecy.
Perhaps you can see that the 53 verses of curses put the fear of God into these primitive, illiterate, and superstitious people, but Moses did not mention being eternally tortured in the fires of hell. If God knew about hell, he did not reveal it in the Old Testament. The curse of hell was left for Jesus to use as a threat.
Jesus said, "But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him." Luke 12:5 NIV.
Does Jesus have that authority? Well, he also said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." Matthew 28:18 NIV.
Now Revelation 21:8, "But cowards who turn back from following me, and those who are unfaithful to me, and the corrupt, and murderers, and the immoral, and those conversing with demons, and idol worshipers and all liars--their doom is in the Lake that burns with fire and sulphur." The Living Bible.
Notice the first in the list to be thrown into the fires of hell are people who think they are Christians.
Jesus spoke of hell more than anyone else in the Bible. He said it was "eternal punishment", he said, "depart from me you who are cursed into everlasting fire", and "the rich man in hell was in constant torment."
Jesus is the one to fear!
Oren Piper
Siloam Springs