Post details: If God is LOVE, why the suffering?

09/02/08

Permalink 01:36:17 am, Categories: By Trent, GraceHead counseling
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If God is LOVE, why the suffering?

by Trent from March 06
One of the questions that KEEPS coming up at Yahoo Answers is typified by this one:

QUESTION by remag15:
I am agnostic, so I only need Christian responses that truly answer the question. I can't even picture how the nicest person in the world could get away with killing somebody, without everybody changing their minds about the person. Oh and its different with God.
He kills everybody! Not only that, but sends some to HELL! Where is your reason for this Christians??? God cannot be pure love.

Well, I finally bit and produced an answer to this type of question. Here is what I wrote

Yeah the Lord Jesus destroys the damned in the second death, but He also sustains their current existence without any obligation. Worlds come into existence and then are snuffed out in the next super-nova, everything in the cosmos in is flux ... it is going from "dust to dust." Just as you currently exist, your existence is temporary, like a scream in the silence that is soon effaced again by silence.

In short, all of creation has come to being as God (who is a consuming fire) moved aside to allow it to exist, even if only for a short amount of time. He does not owe it to anybody to keep them around any longer ... for all that has a "first" day, will have a conclusion .. and end. Only God is unbeginning and unending, and He does not owe it to those that have a beginning to keep them around indefinitely. It is enough that He sustains them currently, and we don't even have the right to demand that.

So, yes a last day looms over creation and the only thing that will survive the last day is God Himself.

The miracle of the Gospel is that God's own being can be transplanted into the undeserving souls of men, so that when God is all that remains, they will remain by virtue of their oneness with God's Spirit. And also by oneness with the Spirit of God, they can rise above the strife of this world through simply letting this Spirit impact their thoughts and actions ... letting Jesus LITERALLY live through them. This is exactly like taking in water that you know nothing about, and never thirsting again, rather your soul becomes a spring of Living Water ... bubbling over and constantly overflowing to Life.

So, to say that God is love, is to say that He has currently moved aside to allow you to exist currently. But God's Eternal Love is for Himself, and for Him to love Himself in You ... you must take and eat of the substance of His being (the Holy Spirit) and be transformed into the true likeness of God ... be made godly by His Spirit.

Comments:

Comment from: pam [Visitor]
Isn't it an amazing thing that we are saved through the indwelling of that very same Consuming Fire? That which burns away all that is temporal in us. This is the gift that God has given to Christ's church only that by the indwelling Holy Spirit they die daily now and be spared the second death at the end of time when all temporal things will perish in the Lake of Fire. Yet, after this final day, Christ will surrender His crown to His Father once again as He presents the Creation to Him freed from the curse of sin and death. At that point, God will be the All in all and all things will be eternal. Sin and Death will be remembered no more.

All things were created through Christ and all things are held together in Him.

Pam
Permalink 09/02/08 @ 11:06
Comment from: Timothy [Member] · http://www.TrumpetCallofGodOnline.com
Amen!

Jesus - Yahshua, The Source and Author of Life:
"Indeed, all I have is Yours, and all You have is Mine, and in them I have been glorified.
...that they may all be one. Just as You, Father, are united with Me and I with you, I pray that they may be united with Us, so that the world may believe that you sent Me. The glory which You have given to Me, I have given to them; so that they may be one, just as We are one -- I united with them and You with Me, so that they may be completely one, and the world thus realize that You sent Me, and that You have loved them just as You have loved Me."
"Father, I want those You have given Me to be with Me where I am; so that they may see My glory, which You have given Me because You loved Me before the creation of the world. Righteous Father, the world has not known You, but I have known You, and these people have known that You sent Me. I made Your name known to them, and I will continue to make it known; so that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them, and I Myself may be united with them." ~ John 17 CJB


Amen.
Permalink 09/02/08 @ 16:38
Comment from: Timothy [Member] · http://www.TrumpetCallofGodOnline.com
This also comes to mind:

Romans 9:14-24
14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! 15 For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion." 16 So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth." 18 Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens. 19 You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?" 20 But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?" 21 Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? 22 What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, 24 even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?
Permalink 09/02/08 @ 16:47

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