When God comes...

March 17th, 2026
by Mike O'Shea

I remember years ago while on a road trip I passed one of those billboards with a message from God on it. Have you seen those? This particular one said,
“Don’t make me come down there.” – God

The obvious message being if you don’t clean your act up God will feel the need to intervene and that will not be…pleasant.

This sort of understanding is consistent with the Hebrew prophetic imagination. Prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Joel imagined a day when God would “come down there” and the consequence would not be…pleasant.

Joel predicts “the great and terrible day of the Lord.”[1]

Jeremiah envisions a day when the same valley where the people of Judah worshipped idols and sacrificed their children will become a “valley of slaughter,” the bodies of God’s people becoming food for vultures and wild animals.[2]

And then there’s Isaiah. He prays for God’s coming.

“O, that you would burst from the heavens and come down! How the mountains would quake in your presence. As fire causes wood to burn and water to boil, your coming would make the nations tremble. Then your enemies would learn the reason for your fame!”[3]

Like the billboard I saw on my road trip, the Hebrew prophets imagined (perhaps even wanted) the day when, because of people’s sin, God would “come down” and intervene, punishing sinners, destroying the ungodly, and compelling change through fear.

But no sooner did I see that billboard—“Don’t make me come down there”—and I thought, “Uh…he did.”

God did come down, and nothing went the way the prophets imagined.

God came to be with us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth but Jesus did not punish sinners, he did not destroy the ungodly, and he did not compel change through fear.

In fact, no one was afraid of him, at least not in the way Isaiah seems to have imagined. The mountains didn’t quake. The nations didn’t tremble. I supposed the powerful were “afraid” of Jesus in the sense that his life and teaching threatened their status quo, but that resulted in them crucifying him, not cowering at his feet in fear and changing their ways.

What did cause people to bow at Jesus’ feet and change their ways was his resurrection from the dead when he forgave their sin and offered them the gift of his Spirit. All of Jesus’ earliest followers were Jews who were well-versed in Joel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah. Their expectations were shaped by those of the prophets. But after Jesus died and rose from the dead they had to rethink what it meant for God to “come down there.”

Where Isaiah predicted that the Messiah would come “to” Jerusalem, Jesus’ disciples recognized that he came “from” Jerusalem.[4] Where the prophet Joel predicted the great and terrible day of Lord, Peter acknowledged the coming of Jesus was the great and glorious day of the Lord.[5] Even Jesus, quoting Isaiah in Luke 4, chose to omit Isaiah’s prediction that the coming of the Messiah would include the “day of God’s anger against their enemies,” choosing instead to end with “God’s favor.”[6]

The billboard I saw is a great example of Christian people whose understanding hasn’t really been Christianized. That is, they call themselves Christians but their understanding of who God is, what God has done, what God is doing, and perhaps most important how God does what God does, has not been transformed by the truth of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

They act as if the way to know these things is to cobble Bible passages together. It is not. We know God because of the Son he sent, the Son who chose to reveal the Father to us.[7] The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus ought to change our perception of everything, just as it did for his earliest followers. We do not believe just because their writings are in the Bible that Joel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah understood everything accurately. We believe God gave them words and insights for their time and that there are ways those words and insights (handled Christianly) can still be profitable for followers of Jesus today. But we don’t believe that because Isaiah anticipated the nations would tremble at the coming of God they did or will.

God came down and the nations did not tremble. They crucified God and God did not stop them.

It is not the threat of God’s fury or vengeance that will change people (or the nations). If the legacy of prophets teaches us anything it ought to be that. What has proven to change people, however, is the revelation in Christ of God’s unfailing love and faithfulness. It’s a slow process, but it’s the only one that works.

We don’t need to be worried about the prospect of God “coming down there.” We need God to come to us. We don’t need to be rescued from God. We need to be rescued by God. Well-meaning Christians put stupid slogans on billboards like, “Don’t make me come down there.” Christians whose understanding of reality has been reshaped by God already coming down here say instead, “Come Lord Jesus!”

[1] Joel 2:31
[2] Jeremiah 7:30-34
[3] Isaiah 64:1-2
[4] Compare Isaiah 59:20 with Romans 11:26
[5] Compare Joel 2:31 with Acts 2:20
[6] Compare Luke 4:18-19 with Isaiah 61:1-2
[7] Matthew 11:27