Killing sinners is right. Mercy and forgiveness is right, too.

Many who claim to believe and to teach the gospel are in a similar error. They set aside the Old Testament Scriptures, of which Christ declared, "They are they which testify of Me." John 5:39. In rejecting the Old, they virtually reject the New; for both are parts of an inseparable whole. No man can rightly present the law of God without the gospel, or the gospel without the law. The law is the gospel embodied, and the gospel is the law unfolded. The law is the root, the gospel is the fragrant blossom and fruit which it bears. {COL 128.2}

So, there cannot be a dichotomy between the OT and NT. If there's a discrepancy or contradiction, it means that we are misunderstanding either the OT or NT or both. God does not contradict Himself, but we often misunderstand what He means.

The serpent accused God of being untrustworthy and Eve of being naive....

This is the foundation of all sin: the lie that God is untrustworthy, the lie that God is not altogether loving and that he doesn't have our best interests in mind. Adam and Eve came under the grip of this deceptive picture of God. At that moment they stopped trusting God as their source of life. Consequently, they saw themselves as deficient.

A faulty picture of God led to an ungodly evaluation that in turn brought about a rebellious action...The lie created an emptiness as well as the futile and rebellious means of filling it. A false concept of God, and therefore of herself, gave birth to sinful behavior, which in turn brought about spiritual and physical death.

This is not merely an account of what happened a long time ago. It's our own story. Under the bondage of the serpent's life, we try to achieve through our own efforts what God wants to freely give us.

To the extent that the God we envision is less than all-loving, gracious, kind, and altogether on our side, we can't trust him with our whole being....

Just as the foundation of all that separates us from God is a false picture of God, so too the foundation of all that restores our innocent communion with God is a true picture of God. So everything hangs on the question, Where do we find the true picture of God? That answer that the Bible unequivocally and emphatically gives is Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the truth that dispels the serpent's lie.

When God thinks, John is saying, it is Jesus. And when God expresses Himself, it is Jesus....

Whereas the enemy covered up the true God in a veil of deceptive darkness that brought death, Jesus turns the light on so we can see who God really is. In doing this, Jesus gives life.

In Christ we see the glory of God (see 2 Cor 3:18-4:6; 1 Jn 1:1-3). In Christ the previously concealed God has been unambiguously revealed. In Christ the serpent's lie is dispelled....

To know Jesus is to know the Father, and to see Jesus is to see the Father. It's that simple.

Christ revealed himself to their souls. Divinity flashed through humanity, and they returned so filled with this one thought, so charmed with the ideas he had presented, that when the leaders of Israel inquired, "Why have ye not brought him?" they replied, "Never man spake like this man." They had seen that which priests and rulers would not see,--humanity flooded with the light and glory of divinity.

Those who would behold this glory would be drawn to love Jesus and to love the Father whom he represented. Christ exalted the character of God, attributing to him the praise, and giving to him the credit, of the whole purpose of his own mission on earth,--to set men right through the revelation of God. In Christ was arrayed before men the paternal grace and the matchless perfections of the Father.

In his prayer just before his crucifixion, he declared, "I have manifested thy name." "I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." When the object of his mission was attained,--the revelation of God to the world,--the Son of God announced that his work was accomplished, and that the character of the Father was made manifest to men. (ST 1/29/90)

No to both questions.

Do you kill sinners first, and then have mercy on them? Or have mercy on them first, and then kill them?

It's funny that you apparently don't see that you are believing things which are mutually exclusive. That you say things like this:



should be an alert to consider if there might be something that's not fitting in your paradigm.