You cannot read today's scripture passages (Nahum 1-3; Revelation 14) without getting an uneasy feeling that God is a God of wrath. In Nahum 1:2 the prophet Nahum the Elkoshite had this to say concerning the city of Nineveh (in the Book of Jonah, this great city is described as a wicked city worthy of destruction - Jonah 1:2):
"The Lord is a jealous and avenging God;
the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath.
The Lord takes vengeance on his foes
and vents his wrath against his enemies."
He further said,
"Who can withstand his indignation?
Who can endure his fierce anger?
His wrath is poured out like fire;
the rocks are shattered before him." (Nahum 1:6)
And in the Book of Revelation, concerning anyone who worships the beast (Satan):
A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on their forehead or on their hand, they, too, will drink the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever. There will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.” (Revelation 14:9-11)
The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. (Revelation 14:19)
It's helpful to read Dr. Robert Stackpole's answer to the question posted on this blog. And I quote:
"Let's start by defining what God's anger is not, and could never be. Holy Scripture and the Catholic Tradition do not mean by God's "wrath" and "anger" that He has a bad temper that needs to be appeased before He can be merciful to us, or that He "feels" angry with us at times, and needs to be "calmed down" by our repentance!
God does not have changing feelings or attitudes. If there are passages in Scripture that seem to imply that He does, these need to be understood as metaphorical ways of speaking about God's total opposition to evil and total support of all good. The First Vatican Council stated clearly that God is "almighty, eternal ... infinite in intelligence, in will, and in all perfection ... absolutely simple and immutable ... of supreme beatitude in and from Himself."
"Immutable" means unchangeable, in that He radiates every "perfection" at every moment, and dwells in infinite "beatitude" or, in other words, infinite joy. This also means that God does not have a strict and vengeful side to His personality that needs to be "bought off" before He can be merciful to us. God has no "sides" to His character at all. Hard as this may be for us (as finite creatures) to understand, God is always infinitely perfect in every way, perfectly merciful AND perfectly just in everything that He does. In fact, all his perfections are manifest in His every action.
Now that we know what God's anger is not, let's try to define what it is: the divine perfection of "justice," a justice by which He permits the self-destructive effects of sin and evil to run their course, thereby rendering to the sinner his due. In other words, God's "wrath" means that if we are stubbornly evil and impenitent, He will permit our sins to have their inevitable destructive (and especially self-destructive) effects upon our bodies and souls."
"That is why the catechism defines "hell" as essentially "a state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed" (1033). As Father Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, explained in the book Pillars of Fire in My Soul: The Spirituality of St. Faustina (Marian Press, 2003): God is totally opposed to all evil, and sends His lightning bolts to oppose it (so to speak), yet we cling by our sins to the lightning rod of evil, and then complain that He is a God of wrath!"
The apostle Paul says it this way:
"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." (Romans 1:18-20)
Habakkuk 3:2
"Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy."
And the prophet Jeremiah reminded us:
"Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail." (Lamentations 3:22)
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