Subject: What is the people sin? |
Bible Note: Why Does God Let Innocent People Suffer? This is the most frequently asked question concerning God. If God is loving, why do evil people flourish and innocent people perish? Why does God not step in to help, deliver, and save? Millions of people died in World War II. Many innocent people are still dying all around the world today in war and in peace. Babies are born impaired. Children become crippled. Adults become paralyzed. Old people become invalids. There is senseless killing, lying, cheating, stealing, and robbing between and within nations and ethnic groups, in "bad neighborhoods" and "good neighborhoods," and in families. Who are the victims? Mostly the innocent - the children, the aged, and the nice people. Where is God? Is He not a loving God? Did He not create man? Why does He not help? Why does He let it happen? Isn't He in control? We need to go back to the beginning to see why things are the way they are and if there is a solution to this problem that all humanity faces. The Battle of Two Kingdoms The Bible tells us that before man was created, Lucifer, the archangel who was the ruler over the earth, had rebelled against God and become God's enemy, Satan. The earth had become the kingdom of Satan. Then there was a struggle between the two kingdoms - God's and Satan's. Man is to Express God and Rule for God Man was made by God in His image to express God and rule for God. To express God is to love as God loves, be righteous as God is righteous, and so on. God has many divine attributes, and man was created with the corresponding human virtues. Man is supposed to live a life that expresses God's divine attributes through his human virtues. To rule for God is to be God's deputy authority, king of the earth, to overthrow and replace Satan and to bring in God's kingdom of love and righteousness. Man was created perfectly. He would not get sick or die. God provided everything that man would need to live, to express God, and to rule for God. For man's physical existence, God gave man air, water, food, and sunshine. To make the environment pleasant for man, God made trees, flowers, and grass. To make the earth a lively place, God made the animals. For man to fulfill his function - expressing God and ruling for God - God made a spirit within man and set man before the tree of life. The tree of life signifies God becoming life to man. If man would take God into his spirit by eating the tree of life, man would have God as life and be able to express God and to rule for God. The Greatest Tragedy of the Universe Although God's intention would have been fulfilled if man ate from the tree of life, God still allowed man to choose between Him and Satan - signified by the tree of knowledge. Satan came in disguise, in trickery, and deceived man by making the tree of knowledge seem very pleasant. Man chose the tree of knowledge. Instead of God's life, man received the satanic life into himself, resulting in sin, evil, and death. The satanic life has been growing in man for the last six thousand years. Because man took in Satan's life, man is under the control of the satanic nature inwardly as well as the authority of Satan outwardly. The Bible calls Satan "the god of this age." Man is blinded by him. Man is lying in the hand of this evil one and is unconscious of what the evil one is doing to and in him. Satan's desire is to ruin and kill man. The real and living God created man, but the god of this age got into man. The universal tragedy is that the very man who was to be king living in God's kingdom has become a slave dying in Satan's kingdom. Satan is destroying the man God created, so that the condition today is not God's original intention. continued----------- |