God is Dangerous: Opening up the SermonAudio page this morning, the featured message was entitled: “God is Dangerous.” The speaker’s name was vaguely familiar to me because, if memory serves, he wrote a book years ago entitled Hyper Calvinism and John Gill. I read it decades ago and remember almost nothing from it now. The book itself disappeared long ago along with most of my former library. But after listening to this sermon, I came away deeply troubled by how much modern preaching seems willing to substitute psychological fear tactics and sensational imagery for the simple truth of Christ crucified.
First, Scripture absolutely does speak of the fear of God, His holiness, His judgment, and the terror of facing Him apart from Christ. Those themes are biblical. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Hebrews 10:31. So the mere mention of divine wrath or danger is not itself the issue. But the governing atmosphere of this entire message is not the majesty of Christ set forth from Scripture, but a relentless barrage of fear imagery, catastrophe scenarios, and emotional alarm designed to unsettle and terrify the listener.
From start to finish, the sermon floods the listener with horror imagery: burning, death, panic, violence, electrocution, catastrophe, terror, and destruction. Rather than setting forth Christ through the Scriptures, the message feels more like a sustained effort to psychologically frighten men into religion through emotional shock and fear saturation.
There is a vast difference between solemnly warning men from Scripture and constructing an entire sermon around emotional fear manipulation. The first speaks to the conscience through truth. The second attempts to overwhelm the imagination through psychological alarm. The assumption appears to be that if enough terror can be generated, enough panic stirred, and enough emotional pressure applied, sinners may finally run to Christ. But Scripture says the gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation, not psychological intimidation.
The apostles did not go into the world proclaiming “God is dangerous.” They preached Christ crucified, risen, exalted, and reigning. Even when warning men of judgment, the center of apostolic preaching remained the person and work of Christ Himself. And frankly, there is something deeply troubling about the increasingly theatrical language employed in much of this kind of preaching. The cross of Christ is treated less as the holy accomplishment of redemption and more as a platform for emotional dramatization.
And although I had no desire to quote this sermon directly, the following statement deserves sober condemnation: “God flipped the switch and His electricity of wrath went into Jesus’ body and soul.” Scripture never speaks this way. The holy suffering of the Son of God is not presented in Scripture through the language of electrical torture, mechanical violence, or theatrical shock imagery. Such statements are not “bold preaching.” They are profoundly careless and irreverent ways of handling the cross of Christ, reducing the majesty of redemption into emotional sensationalism. The language sounds more like a horror scene or execution metaphor than the reverent testimony of holy writ. It reduces the cross into something mechanical, sensational, and almost grotesque. Christ is no longer being set forth as the spotless Lamb of God offering Himself through the eternal Spirit unto God. Instead, the imagery begins resembling a cosmic torture spectacle designed to shock the listener emotionally.
There is something deeply wrong when the sufferings of Christ are handled in a careless or theatrical manner simply to produce emotional intensity. The cross is not an instrument of religious sensationalism. It is holy ground. Scripture speaks of Christ’s sufferings with gravity, reverence, and restraint because the cross is the most sacred revelation of God’s righteousness, justice, mercy, and love ever revealed to men.
Likewise, the statement that Christ suffered “greater than anybody in hell will ever suffer” immediately exposes the instability of the entire system being presented. If hell supposedly consists of eternal conscious torment beneath the infinite wrath of God without end, then by what reasoning did Christ suffer “greater” wrath within a few hours upon the cross? At this point, theology begins collapsing into emotional exaggeration. Statements are no longer being governed by careful scriptural thought, but by the desire to intensify emotional effect.
Another thing that stood out to me is how often the sermon seems to portray the Father almost primarily as a threatening force from whom men must escape. The language becomes heavily weighted toward terror management rather than the revelation of God in Christ. Yet Scripture says, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” II Corinthians 5:19. The cross is not the Son persuading a hostile Father to become merciful. The Father Himself sent the Son. “The Father himself loveth you.” John 16:27. The Father Himself loved His people in Christ before the foundation of the world. “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.” Ephesians 1:4. The wrath of God is real, but it must never be presented in a manner that fractures the unity of the Father and the Son or reduces Christ into merely a shield protecting sinners from God Himself.
At times, this kind of preaching almost portrays the Father as a terrifying force from whom sinners must somehow hide, while Christ functions mainly as the shield standing in the way of divine fury. But the gospel is not the story of Christ persuading an unwilling Father to become loving. The Father Himself loved His people, chose them in Christ, sent the Son, and accomplished redemption according to His own eternal purpose and grace. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.” John 3:16.
None of this is written to deny divine wrath, holiness, or judgment. Scripture itself speaks plainly and soberly concerning such realities. But there is an enormous difference between apostolic preaching and the emotionally charged fear machinery so common today. The apostles trusted the majesty of Christ revealed in Scripture. That alone was enough to humble sinners, expose sin, magnify grace, and exalt the Son of God without the aid of religious sensationalism.
And the damage produced by this kind of fear-governed preaching often becomes painfully visible in the consciences of those who sit beneath it for years. Much of it leaves behind a trail of frightened, introspective, and spiritually exhausted people. Men and women sit beneath these sermons year after year trapped in continual introspection, fear, and uncertainty, endlessly examining themselves to see whether they have repented deeply enough, believed sincerely enough, or escaped deception successfully enough. Instead of directing the soul outward unto Christ, fear-centered preaching continually drives the conscience inward toward self-survival and self-analysis. Meanwhile many hardened hearers simply grow accustomed to the emotional rhetoric and cease being affected by it altogether. The result is not stable gospel assurance, but confusion, fear, exhaustion, and religious bondage.
I was nearly ready to conclude these thoughts when I looked once more at the opening words of the sermon itself. Ironically, the message begins by asking: “What is God really like?” There is something astonishingly presumptuous about raising such a question and then proceeding to answer it primarily through fear-driven dramatization, catastrophe imagery, and emotional terror. According to Scripture, the answer is ultimately found in Jesus Christ Himself. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” John 14:9. Christ is not merely the escape from divine danger. He is the revelation of the glory of God. Yet throughout this sermon, fear of punishment overwhelmingly dominates the atmosphere while Christ appears largely near the end as the means of escaping catastrophe. That is a radically different atmosphere from apostolic preaching, where the Son of God Himself stood at the very center of the message from beginning to end. Ultimately, Scripture does not leave us staring at “danger” as the final revelation of God. It leaves us beholding Christ. “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” II Corinthians 4:6. MPJ