J
Jzyehoshua
Guest
Hey Redhen, I just now read all the way through the topic and I think you have some good thoughts on the subject. The issue of pain and suffering in the world is certainly a deep topic not to be taken lightly.
I don’t claim to have all the answers of course, I’m just sharing my own thoughts on the subject here, as a person who’s thought also on the subject of how the righteous God of the Bible can be justified, and has questioned God about it. We both agree that to trust in Him, we must believe in His goodness, and I don’t think we’re too separate save perhaps in our conclusions thus far. Anyway, here are my thoughts:
God created the world, the universe, and mankind completely good. Even Satan was originally good as stated in the book of Ezekiel. God created us all with free will because He didn’t want robots but people who could receive and return His love with love of their own. He wanted beings who could appreciate and praise Him.
Satan was given governance of this world and is called “the prince of this world” in the Bible. In Isaiah 22 we see Eliakim, aka the Holy Spirit (Revelation 3:7 shows He has the key of David, not Peter), was given the powers that apparently once belonged to Satan due to Satan’s disobedience, who as the Holy Spirit is prefigured by Eliakim, is prefigured by Shebna. In the book of Esther, a similar prefiguration appears to occur involving Haman, Esther, and Mordecai, which may be God’s way of historically recreating the history that occurred in Heaven, perhaps before our world ever began!
At any rate, Satan deliberately rebelled against God knowing completely what he was doing and that he was rejecting all goodness, which I believe is why he can never repent. Satan tricked our ancestors into disobeying God also, and with that, sin entered into the world, defiling not only the human race but all creation. Because our ancestors had not done this with complete knowledge like Satan, I believe we were still able to repent and thus God made a way for a remnant of our race to be saved through Jesus the coming Messiah, through whom not only those to come could be saved through trust in God, but also those who had done so in the past!
Through this fall, violence and evil entered the earth. Because the entire world was in rebellion against God, and under Satan’s rule, God also ended up cursing it as spoken of in Genesis so that the once ideal climate conditions became adverse. Plants no longer produced only good things. Death entered the world as the inevitable consequence of rebellion against God, for as a just Judge He can not allow evil to go unpunished.
Jesus is God’s answer to all of this. Through His sacrifice, we can regain eternal life, a right relationship with God, a right heart, mind, and spirit so that our inclination to sin can now be overcome, and a part in God’s coming new Creation which will not include the death, pain, or evil that this world involves.
You see, God could eliminate the diseases and natural disasters from this world. But the real problem would still exist. Our hearts. We are a reason there is evil in this world. Human beings are the cause of murder and genocide, rape and incest, poverty and theft, and numerous other evils.
For God to fix this Creation, He must first fix our hearts. That is why He can’t allow us in His new Creation until we accept Jesus. We’d just mess it up like we’ve messed this one up, and keep making it miserable for ourselves and one another. You see, Jesus is the answer not just because our sins are paid for, but because through Him we are made new people who can enter God’s new creation without messing it up.
The Bible focuses on how our old bodies will be destroyed and with them our sin natures, i.e. our inclinations to sin. But without an eternal commitment to God, which is part of what brings saving faith, we would just fall again like Adam and Eve did.
And Jesus tricked Satan (or at any rate didn’t bother telling Satan what was really going on) so He could enter Hell and gain from the devil the keys of Hell and of death, i.e. power over those realms. Before that, Satan had power over our entire race which apparently was given him by God before his fall, so that when we sinned he gained dominion over us as we each inevitably died. Therefore, Jesus was literally redeeming us from Satan’s power by paying the penalty each of us owed for our sin through His death on the cross.
In the last day when all things will be revealed, God will show forth all the truths about Himself so that all will realize His utter justice, and then will have praise for Him alone, for none but Him is good, even as Jesus said. People then will realize that had they only sought God and His truth, humbling themselves, that He’d have drawn near to them and taught them the paths of life.
I don’t claim to have all the answers of course, I’m just sharing my own thoughts on the subject here, as a person who’s thought also on the subject of how the righteous God of the Bible can be justified, and has questioned God about it. We both agree that to trust in Him, we must believe in His goodness, and I don’t think we’re too separate save perhaps in our conclusions thus far. Anyway, here are my thoughts:
God created the world, the universe, and mankind completely good. Even Satan was originally good as stated in the book of Ezekiel. God created us all with free will because He didn’t want robots but people who could receive and return His love with love of their own. He wanted beings who could appreciate and praise Him.
Satan was given governance of this world and is called “the prince of this world” in the Bible. In Isaiah 22 we see Eliakim, aka the Holy Spirit (Revelation 3:7 shows He has the key of David, not Peter), was given the powers that apparently once belonged to Satan due to Satan’s disobedience, who as the Holy Spirit is prefigured by Eliakim, is prefigured by Shebna. In the book of Esther, a similar prefiguration appears to occur involving Haman, Esther, and Mordecai, which may be God’s way of historically recreating the history that occurred in Heaven, perhaps before our world ever began!
At any rate, Satan deliberately rebelled against God knowing completely what he was doing and that he was rejecting all goodness, which I believe is why he can never repent. Satan tricked our ancestors into disobeying God also, and with that, sin entered into the world, defiling not only the human race but all creation. Because our ancestors had not done this with complete knowledge like Satan, I believe we were still able to repent and thus God made a way for a remnant of our race to be saved through Jesus the coming Messiah, through whom not only those to come could be saved through trust in God, but also those who had done so in the past!
Through this fall, violence and evil entered the earth. Because the entire world was in rebellion against God, and under Satan’s rule, God also ended up cursing it as spoken of in Genesis so that the once ideal climate conditions became adverse. Plants no longer produced only good things. Death entered the world as the inevitable consequence of rebellion against God, for as a just Judge He can not allow evil to go unpunished.
Jesus is God’s answer to all of this. Through His sacrifice, we can regain eternal life, a right relationship with God, a right heart, mind, and spirit so that our inclination to sin can now be overcome, and a part in God’s coming new Creation which will not include the death, pain, or evil that this world involves.
You see, God could eliminate the diseases and natural disasters from this world. But the real problem would still exist. Our hearts. We are a reason there is evil in this world. Human beings are the cause of murder and genocide, rape and incest, poverty and theft, and numerous other evils.
For God to fix this Creation, He must first fix our hearts. That is why He can’t allow us in His new Creation until we accept Jesus. We’d just mess it up like we’ve messed this one up, and keep making it miserable for ourselves and one another. You see, Jesus is the answer not just because our sins are paid for, but because through Him we are made new people who can enter God’s new creation without messing it up.
The Bible focuses on how our old bodies will be destroyed and with them our sin natures, i.e. our inclinations to sin. But without an eternal commitment to God, which is part of what brings saving faith, we would just fall again like Adam and Eve did.
And Jesus tricked Satan (or at any rate didn’t bother telling Satan what was really going on) so He could enter Hell and gain from the devil the keys of Hell and of death, i.e. power over those realms. Before that, Satan had power over our entire race which apparently was given him by God before his fall, so that when we sinned he gained dominion over us as we each inevitably died. Therefore, Jesus was literally redeeming us from Satan’s power by paying the penalty each of us owed for our sin through His death on the cross.
In the last day when all things will be revealed, God will show forth all the truths about Himself so that all will realize His utter justice, and then will have praise for Him alone, for none but Him is good, even as Jesus said. People then will realize that had they only sought God and His truth, humbling themselves, that He’d have drawn near to them and taught them the paths of life.
