Monday, May 09, 2016
God is all powerful. Yet He allows
Satan to carry out his deceitful and destructive activities—within certain
limits—for a purpose.
To understand that purpose, let’s
begin with an example from the book of Job.
“One day the angels came to present
themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. The Lord said to
Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’ Satan answered the Lord, ‘From roaming
through the earth and going back and forth in it.’ Then the Lord said to Satan,
‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is
blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.’
“ ‘Does
Job fear God for nothing?’ Satan replied. ‘Have you not put a hedge around him
and his household and
everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks
and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike
everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.’ The Lord said to
Satan, ‘Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man
himself do not lay a finger’ ” (Job 1:6-12, NIV).
God understood Job’s heart better
than Satan perceived it. Though God granted Satan permission to afflict Job,
the devil failed in his attempt to turn this righteous man against God.
Nevertheless, the story of Job’s suffering under Satan’s affliction reveals
much about why God sometimes allows us to suffer.
God tests the character of every
human being, and that is a major aspect of what happened with Job. Paul wrote,
“We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts” (1
Thessalonians 2:4, NIV). Moses explained to the ancient Israelites, “Remember
how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to
humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or
not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger [a form
of suffering] and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your
fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on
every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:2-3, NIV).
God allows mankind to learn —partly
by firsthand experience—that the only way of life that will work is
the way of life He reveals in His Word, the Bible. That lesson will not be
complete until all of humanity has learned that “every word” of God’s revealed
instructions is vital to our physical, mental and spiritual well-being (Matthew
4:4; Deuteronomy 5:29). No alternative way of life achieves God’s purpose or
ultimately leads us to happiness.
But how can God get this point
across to people who are born into the world with no knowledge or
understanding? He could have preprogrammed us to behave only according to
harmless predetermined instincts. But then we would be mere automatons, having
no choices, no individuality, no character.
Such existence is not what God
intends for us. He has created us to become members of His family—His sons and
daughters (2 Corinthians 6:18)—able to bear great responsibilities within His
family.
At the beginning of human existence
God stated His purpose for us: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image,
according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,
over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over
every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in His own image;
in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis
1:26-27).
God created mankind to be
like Him, to rule—have dominion—over His creation. To learn to properly
exercise such a level of responsibility, man must first learn how to discern
right from wrong, good from bad, and the wise from the foolish. Learning real
wisdom involves learning how to make wise choices. From the beginning God
pointed out the right way, but He allowed human beings to be exposed to and
make foolish choices.
God allowed Satan, the epitome of
evil, to enter the Garden of Eden and tempt Adam and Eve to depart from God’s
instructions. They then had to make a choice. They chose to follow Satan
rather than God. Satan’s tragic delusion of mankind has been the result.
However, when the Lord Jesus Christ
returns to the earth, He will remove the delusion of Satan. God then will
begin, on a grand scale, the process of reversing the damage Satan has done.
Eventually none of the devil’s influence will remain.
During the millennium mankind will
be able to review thousands of years of tragic history and compare it with the
blessings of Christ’s rule. Sadly, the Bible reveals that after this occurs the
overwhelming majority of humanity will again reject God and embrace Satan’s
deceptions and enthusiastically follow him to his final destruction:
“And when the thousand years are
ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the
nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather
them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up
over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the
beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, and the devil who
had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast
and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever
and ever” (Revelation 20:7-10).
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