How can a God of love allow all this evil and suffering to exist? My wife’s question is when my parents physically abused me I prayed for help and God did nothing, why?
To answer the first question we need to divide the question into two parts. We need to understand how the spiritual domains operate and also answer the question why are we here? To do this we need to go back to the beginning when God first made Adam and put him in the garden of Eden with his wife Eve.
At that time God gave dominion over the earth to Adam and Eve. We can see this in Genesis 1:28, And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
Clearly at this time we can see that man has dominion over the earth and all its living beings. God also told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We can read this law in Genesis 2:17, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die.”
Genesis 3:4-6, Then the serpent said to the woman: You will not die, for God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and pleasing to the eyes, and a desirable tree to make one wise, she took some of its fruit, and ate it. She also gave her husband with her, and He ate.
The spiritual law on dominance says that if you disobey God and follow the instructions of another entity, you become subservient to the other entity. We can see this law explained in Romans 6:16, Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as slaves to obey, you are slaves to whom you obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto justice?
In the Garden of Eden, I’m sure Satan didn’t bother to mention to Eve that if she ate the fruit, she would be giving the dominion of the earth to Satan. But that is exactly what happened. Before Jesus appeared on the scene, Satan ruled the earth, including man and all animals. Jesus called Satan “the ruler of this world.” We can see this in John 12:31, Now is the concept of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.
When Satan offered the kingdoms of the earth to Jesus, if Jesus bowed down and worshiped Satan, Jesus did not argue with Satan about ownership of the earth. We see this in Matthew 4: 8-9, Again the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. And he said to him: All this I will give you, if prostrate you will worship me.
Notice that Satan was trying to get Jesus to do Satan’s will just like Satan did with Eve when Eve ate the fruit. Satan was trying to maintain dominion over the earth by trying to make Jesus subservient to Satan’s will.
When Satan entered Judas and Judas handed Jesus over to the religious leaders to be crucified, Satan did not realize at the time that Jesus, being an innocent and sinless man, was about to regain dominion over the earth. We can see this in John 14:30, I will no longer talk much with you, because the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me.
I believe that after Jesus died on the cross, He went down to hell to preach to the captives as the Bible says, but I also believe that Jesus went down there so that the demons would know that they no longer have dominion over the earth and over the people. of the land without the permission of the people.
The only way the forces of evil can have dominion over any human being today is only with the permission of the human being, either by directly inviting Satan or his demons into their life or what human beings don’t realize is that you can also give permission to any evil. force by the law of dominion. This is how it works, if you are doing something contrary to the laws of God or man, you are giving permission to the forces of evil. This includes hate, envy, murder, lying, stealing, cheating, excessive alcohol or drug use, spirit tablets, anything illegal or harmful to God or man.
When we deliberately choose to do evil or are doing evil without even realizing it, we are giving Satan and his demonic forces permission to manipulate the circumstances in our lives. When this happens, nothing good will come of it.
Humanity is currently in the midst of a domain change. Satan no longer has dominion over humanity except the dominion that Satan deceives humanity into believing he has. Jesus because of the cross now has dominion over the earth and all its contents. Humanity is currently awaiting the return of Jesus to reclaim their possession of the earth, which Jesus is due to arrive at any moment. We can see this in Romans 6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
When the earth changes possession, there will be a big change in the way things currently are. We can see this in Revelation 21:4, “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there will be no more death, nor weeping, nor weeping. There will be no more pain, because the former things have passed away.” As you can clearly see, God he is not yet the king of the earth.
When people asked how God could allow evil to happen, we know that when God regains dominion over the earth, evil will be dealt with quickly.
The next part of the question is what is the purpose of man here on earth? Why are we here? The Bible makes it clear from the beginning of the book that humanity is here on earth to learn the lessons of good and evil. Adam and Eve chose from the beginning of time to learn these lessons when they intended to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and after all these thousands of years, the offspring of Adam and Eve continue to stumble over these same lessons from the right. and evil
I know it sounds redundant, but man cannot learn the lessons of good unless good exists on the planet and at the same time man cannot learn the lessons of evil unless evil exists on the planet. Let’s take another look at the questions.
Why does God allow evil and suffering to exist on this planet? ANSWER: Because that is the direction that humanity chose to take for itself in the pursuit of trying to become like God. Look again at the line that Satan gave Eve to eat the fruit. We read this in Genesis 3:5, For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
To answer my wife’s question about why God didn’t answer her prayer to help her with her abusive parents. ANSWER, Evil exists as part of the lessons we are here to learn. Sometimes when God answers prayers, we look the other way and don’t even recognize when God is at work. I’m not trying to downplay the trauma my wife went through. What I am saying is that when my wife was seventeen she signed up to be an exchange student. At seventeen my wife went to high school in Boston and then to Boston University. She never returned to Japan, except for brief visits to her parents’ home in Tokyo. That to me is God answering prayer. My wife was not answered soon enough.
In this life I have noticed that it is very difficult to see ourselves as others see us. When we, during our daily routine, spend the day sulking, complaining, hating others or just having a bad attitude, we are inviting evil spirits to invade our thoughts and influence our decisions and, in the process, make the decisions we make. people around us feel miserable.
My late mother used to always say “the more I complain, the worse it gets”. She never realized that the two are related. When she complained, the complaint put her mind into a negative mindset that made her day (and ours) progressively worse. In that kind of negative mindset, her mind couldn’t see the good, she only focused her mind on the bad. She was not aware that she was the problem. She was giving the forces of evil indirect permission to invade her thought processes.
Jesus said never to return evil with evil but to overcome evil with good. The Bible rightly says that we should count our blessings. Counting our blessing each morning will help keep our minds in a positive frame of mind throughout the day. Starting each day with an honest conversation with God will also keep your thoughts in a positive mindset.
In conclusion, since we are born here on Satan’s planet, we belong to Satan. If we do nothing to accept Jesus Christ’s plan of salvation, Satan, who already gets what he wants, will for the most part leave us alone in our lives. Satan knows that when we die we already belong to him if we have rejected God’s plan of salvation for us.
However, if we are contemplating Christ’s offer of salvation, then Satan will attack us. Once we accept Christ, it is at that moment that Christ will open our spiritual eyes and put his hedge around us to protect us from the Devil’s attacks. We can see this in 2 Corinthians 3:14-16, “But their understanding was blinded. For to this day the same veil remains open in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil has been removed in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil is placed over his heart. Yet when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.” We also see this in 2 Corinthians 4:3, “But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who perish.”
To avoid falling prey to Satan and his wiles, it would be wise to know the ways that Satan and his demons operate in our lives and also draw closer to God through prayer and Bible reading every day.