By the Numbers

Friday, September 6, 2013

God Works Things Together for Good!

                       God Works Things Together for Good!
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#God's-Ways    #Anthropic-Principle  #Theodicy
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Romans 8:28 says, "We know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them" (New Living Translation). But many persons including true Christian believers are quick to ask: What about Hitler types? What about natural disasters? Why does God allow such evils to exist? Why doesn't the Almighty Creator destroy them? What about those who love God? Let's consider these questions one at a time.
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What About Hitler Types?
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Yes, history is full of dictators who want to conquer the world  and impose their thinking and way of life on others. Consider Genghis  Khan, Caesar, Muhammad, Hitler, others, and the final one will be Antichrist (Rev. 13). They don't care how many persons are killed or properties destroyed. Such tyrants have even tried to destroy Israel, God's chosen people. You ask how can a good God allow that? God  promised the nation Israel would be blessed and prosper in every way, if Israel obeyed his commands, but would be cursed if it did not (Deuteronomy 27-28).  It's not hard to imagine that applies to all the nations but in God's timing. 
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Those curses included many things nations are increasingly guilty of today such as idolatry, sexual deviation with the same sex or even animals, theft, deception, murder. Not all persons within a nation may be guilty, but when they may do nothing to avert those who do practice such things they must be punished along with the others. Only our Creator God can know what is best for us and can serve as our standard of what is true and right and good. His laws are not given to hurt us or spoil our fun, but to insure our health and happiness. So we must trust and obey the commands and promises of His Word. Even national leaders and citizens without the  Bible have a conscience to know right from wrong and would be quick to object if the evil things they do were done to them. Dictators who want to dominate the world, deceive, destroy, and murder--they are of the devil.
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It's said we think 10,000 or more thoughts a day. Respectfully, may I ask what your thoughts are? Are they: Thank you Lord for my many benefits. Guide me to know and do your will. Forgive my sin and restore my fellowship with You. I love You  Lord. I want to tell others of your love and goodness. Having no such thoughts, we might be tempted to want power and conquest? Aren't we arrogant to think we know better than the very Creator, Sustainer, and Judge of all men? And are we certain there's no consequences and no Hell? What would Heaven become if all the evil God rejecting people went there? It's simply impossible because Heaven with God is pure truth, goodness, and love.  In loving evil, people choose Hell.
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What About Natural Disasters?
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Natural disasters may destroy thousands of lives and cause millions of dollars in loss of properties. The news so often tells us of hurricanes, floods, forest fires, mudslides, volcanoes, earthquakes occurring in places throughout the world. Quite true, but it's not mentioned and only recently understood that much of this is really necessary and beneficial. The earth is covered with more than two thirds water and in places miles deep. These disasters are often the result of tectonic plates that move and push up the lands and mountains preventing earth being completely covered or eroded. And these things must occur to keep the world in balance, even above water and livable.
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Knowing such disasters occur, aren't we foolish to take unnecessary chances like building houses on live volcanoes, in dry river beds, beside slopping mountains, near an earthquake fault. God doesn't stop His natural laws or perform a miracle every time we do something foolish. Moreover, it's wise to take out insurance and check out conditions and plan to avoid dangerous conditions. Rather than blame God, live a bitter rebellious life, we do well to admit our mistakes and learn from them.
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The anthropic principle points in multiple ways that our planet is designed for the coming of man. Our sun is the right size, the right place in the galaxy, and is the right distance from the earth to insure life.  If earth's revolution around the sun,  or its rotation on its axis were slower  or faster we would either burn or freeze. If our atmosphere were different we couldn't breath and we would have no fires or too many. Without the pressures in the earth we wouldn't have coal, oil, gas, and metals such as copper, gold, silver, iron that we need to make things. All the different kinds of animals, plants, fish and birds show specified complexity impossible to attribute to mere accident and time.
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 Nature has no mind or will, and all living things show design pointing to a great and good designer God who made them for us. This is cause to rejoice, be thankful, and trust in a living and good Almighty Creator who knows and cares about us.
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Why Does God Allow Such Evils to Exist If He Could Immediately Destroy Them?
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God would not immediately eliminate evil as we're all sinners to varying degrees. But He can and will defeat it gradually being most kind, understanding, and patient with us. God gives us abundant opportunities to see His goodness, see our sin, and turn to Him for forgiveness and a love-trust relationship that issues in obedience and hope.
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 He could have created us as programmed robots but gave us the dignity of free will and opportunity for loving trusting relationship with Him forever. In infinite knowledge and wisdom, He knew before creation that we would sin (Isa. 46:10; Ephesians 1:4, 11).  And He knew the very best way to overcome sin was not to destroy the sinner, but defeat the sin. This God did in sending His beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, Messiah, the God-man. 
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This isn't the best world, but it's the best way to the best world--Heaven. It's our choice whether we want God and abundant life with Him, or have our own way with the resulting consequence--the lonely dark dispare of eternal Hell (John 3:36). Fulfillment with a loving God (John 3:16), or frustration and futility with His Enemy (John 8:44)--it's each person's choice.
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What About Those Who Love God?
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Yes, we are perplexed and sinful, and only when we trust God, can we see His promises come to pass. Ancient Job lost his wealth, family, health, and couldn't understand why. He knew nothing of Satan's plot to prove Job only served God for His benefits. But Job still trusted God, grew in faith, and finally was restored in God's grace. It was no accident slave baby Moses became a prince of Egypt, and being a murderer was banished to the wilderness forty years.  That's what prepared him to fulfill God's purpose in leading Israel through the wilderness to the promised land.  
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Joseph's dreams offended his brothers who sold him into slavery, and a wicked woman had him imprisoned. But Joseph trusted the Lord and remained true until his dreams became realities as God overruled man's evils to enable now governor Joseph to save many from famine. God's name is never mentioned in the Book of Esther. But His unseen hand is very much at work in Esther's becoming queen, in a sleepless King Ahasuerus hearing his chronicles read, in Haman's plot to hang Mordecai and eliminate the Jews being foiled,  and in Haman being hung on the gallows he made for Mordecai. Saul, the great persecutor of Christians, became Paul, the great preacher of Christ who said, "for me to live is Christ, to die is gain." That can be true in the life of every faithful obedient believer. Trust God's way and timing for it to come true in your life.
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Can we apply some important lessons from all this to our lives? These incidents don't read like fiction, but human faults and facts. They're not made up stories, but real God ordained events. God's unseen hand works things together for good for those who love Him, who are called for His purpose. But we must show faith, obedience and patience in God's timing and God's way--changes take time. We will be tested and not live perfect lives. But in the end we are proved right, wicked unbelief wrong. Justice will be achieved, if not now, later. We wrongly blame God, live bitter, rebellious lives for the problems we humans largely make ourselves.
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God knows best and works things together in His time and His way and we are wise to trust in the promises in His Word. Of course, it starts with a commitment to Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior paying the penalty for our sins on the cross. If you haven't done this, won't you trust him now and follow Jesus all your life for His glory and your good? He knows U, yet loves U as no other can. Trust and obey, there's no other way.
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Link on to other terrific articles mentioned to the right side or below. God bless.
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