What is the most frightening book of the Bible?

In my opinion, there are at least two. I don’t know that I can nail it down to just one. Each of my choices is frightening for different reasons. But I will give you my top two picks for frightening Bible books.

The first frightening Bible book I want to talk about is the book of Judges. It may surprise you, but it is one of the scariest times it is really history that the Bible records. One of the refrains of the book is, “And everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

This book is frightening because instead of looking to God and acting out of righteousness and compassion for one another, the book ends with a woman being raped and murdered by people who think they can do whatever they want.

Judges teaches us about the sin cycle of being set free by the Lord from their enemies, sinning against the Lord in terrible and grotesque ways, and then being placed under bondage to another enemy until the Lord raised up salvation once again.

We must not think that we can decide morality for ourselves. It’s the beginning of our undoing. In the Garden of Eden, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil made humans responsible for morality instead of looking to God.

But we need to turn back to him and he righteousness and holiness from him and not ourselves. Our own ideas of what’s right lead us to the terrible and sinful practices of Israel during the start time.

Another frightening book is the book of Revelation. With all of its prophecies about the end times and the things that will happen at the end of time before the Lord returns, humanity and creation suffers greatly under its own rule and the control of the devil and his forces.

The book has graphic imagery, much of it symbolic to stand for things we don’t completely understand all the time, about the players and stage of that time period. Part of it is scary because we don’t understand everything that’s going to happen, and part of it is scary because of the vivid imagery.

It is scary that when humans are given the choice between Jesus’ rule and returning to the role of the devil, they will choose the devil instead of Jesus. It shows the depravity of sinful humanity that doesn’t know Christ. A very scary thought.

These are a couple of the scariest books I have found in the Bible. They are not “horror” scary. They are scary because of the times and the things that happen within them. It’s a good thing now that they also have positive traits for Christians.

Revelation shows us a coming time that we see has scary from a human perspective, but it shows us that Jesus is the Victor over Satan and reigns no matter what is going on in the world. It gives us peace in the midst of persecution and suffering. We can trust the sovereignty of God at all times and that he is taking care of us.

The book of Judges shows us that there is a sin cycle that we must avoid by following Jesus and walking with him at all times. We must not fall into this continual cycle of trusting in the Lord and then sinning against him. It will get us into a place where we are being disciplined.

When we see these patterns and understand these approaches to the books, they are not really that frightening. But the implications of each book are frightening for our world and anyone we know who is not a believer in Jesus.

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