Updated July 2025

This booklet is an adapted copy of two of our online articles that deals with the subject of God’s character. Receive a physical copy of this booklet for FREE. Send your name and mailing address via the contact page. (U.S. residents only, unless I know of another supplier in your area).

What really happened at the time of the Flood? Did God get so upset with His wayward creation that He went into a rage and wiped them all out? To be honest, a surface reading of the story could (and has) caused many people to believe that the God of the Old Testament is a genocidal maniac. Just read what renowned atheist Richard Dawkins has to say:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” (The God Delusion)

But can a God of love ever be the direct cause of death?

John writes that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Paul writes, “No one who loves others will harm them” (Romans 13:10, CEV). Jesus taught that God is always “kind to the unthankful and to the evil” (Luke 6:35). And God Himself says, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Ezekiel 33:11).

If God is a Deity who directly kills people, wouldn’t that show that God IS willing that some should perish and thus contradict Peter who says God is “NOT willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9)?

In the story of the Flood, what if we found out that God was really on a rescue mission instead of a mission of destruction?