Is Old Testament God and New Testament God the same God?


When I first started studying the Bible I often didn't get the point of the Old Testament. Yes there are important stories and prophesies and everything, but in the Old Testament God seems so harsh and rough. It's somehow harder to understand Him and it almost seems that only the most holy people are able to talk to Him!

But how can it be? We all know that God is the same yesterday, today and forever!

That's very true!...Being a student at a public university means I'm being exposed to people of different understanding with diversity of opinions and beliefs. I've had classmates and professors who used to read Bible as literature and couldn't understand why would someone want to worship such strict and harsh God? They were convinced that if God exists then Christians just worship Jesus because they're just afraid that God will send them to go to Hell if they don't...these people probably read only a portion of one story or just misunderstood some things,  but they had a decent concern; in the Old Testament God seems like a Higher Begin that is somewhere up in Heaven far away from everything.

But studying the Old Testament I found many scriptures that ended up putting everything in place for me, and as I was reading Psalms not too long ago I came across many verses that reminded me that God was and is the same God through all the time! Here are a few of them...

"Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving,
    and perform your vows to the Most High,
and call upon me in the day of trouble;
    I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”  Psalm 50:14-15


"You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
    you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart
    you, God, will not despise." Psalm 51:16-17

From the beginning God was Loving, Caring, Merciful, Good and Holy, and these few verses reminded me of this and showed me that the greatest offering that God wanted all along was the true love for God, a personal relationship. God loved people in the Old Testament the same as He loved them in the New Testament and as He loves us today as well.

God wants people to choose life, to choose blessing and not curse/death just like He wanted that for people in the Old testament.

As Christians we are called to be the salt and light to this world; to be able to give answers to people about our faith and study the Word of God.

May God bless us all in doing so!

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