"A Terrible God"

"At the present day, I am afraid that nine people out of ten do not believe in the God Who is revealed to us in the Bible. I can point you to newspapers, to periodicals, and also to pulpits by the score in which there is a new god set up to be worshipped–not the God of the Old Testament; He is said to be too strict, too severe, too stern for our modern teachers.
They shudder at the very mention of the God of the Puritans. If Jonathan Edwards were to rise from the dead, they would not listen to him for a minute; they would say that they had quite a new god since his day. But, brethren, I believe in the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob; this is my God, the God Who drowned Pharoah and his host at the Red Sea and moved His people to sing, “Hallelujah!” as He did it; the God Who caused the earth to open and swallow up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram and all their company.

A terrible God is the God Whom I adore–He is the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, full of mercy, compassion, and grace, tender and gentle, yet just and dreadful in His holiness and terrible out of His holy places. This is the God Whom we worship, and He Who comes to Him will take Him to be his Instructor, and so shall he learn aright all that he needs to know."

––Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892)