Other Articles on Why God Permits Evil
And
God Cried
What's This World Coming To?
Christians
Must Remember the Holocaust!
Where Was God?
The Katrina and Rita
Calamities Challenge Our Thinking
Why Does God
Permit Calamities?
[Booklet]
Ch 1-Where
Was God?
Ch 2-Why God
Permits Calamities
Ch 3-A
Suffering Savior and Suffering Christians
Ch 4-God Is
Not Trying to Convert the World Now
Ch 5-God's Kingdom
Ch 6-Supposed Objections |
Why Does God
Permit Calamities?
Chapter 5
God's Kingdom
In the Kingdom, Jesus and his
church will embark upon the greatest educational program in
history. Isaiah 11:9 states, “…for the earth shall be full of
the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” Also
Jeremiah 31:34 says, “…for they shall ALL know me from the least
of them unto the greatest.” Verses 29 and 30 show that for the
majority, the Kingdom will provide the first full, fair
opportunity for salvation. “In those days they shall say no
more, the fathers have eaten a sour grape and the children’s
teeth are set on edge. But everyone shall die for his own
iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall
be set on edge.”
When ALL who are not of the
church come forth from the grave in God’s Kingdom (Acts
15:14-17; John 5:28-29), they will be informed that they have
been purchased with the precious blood of Christ. And they will
be made aware of the fact that they are now under the reign of
Jesus Christ and his church (1 Corinthians 6:2). What confidence
they will have that the church will know just how to enter into
their problems! Why? Because the members of the church also were
once sinners. Further, humanity will realize that the church
representatively experienced all the problems, hardships, and
emotional and mental tragedies endured by them. Because “God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten son” for them
(John 3:16), the church will cherish each individual of the
human race.
The personal experiences of
true Christians in overcoming sin and struggling with their own
emotional and psychological problems (2 Corinthians 10:4-5;
Hebrews 12:3-4) will give them an “understanding heart,” so that
they will know when to show compassion for ignorance and when to
administer discipline where willfulness is involved (Hebrews
5:2; Luke 12:48). This plan of rehabilitation will work. The
majority of humanity will gladly receive the instruction, the
discipline and the nurture necessary to pass their trial for
eternal life.
The Blessings of the Kingdom
Isaiah 35
portrays some
of the wondrous Kingdom blessings. “…the desert shall rejoice
and blossom as a rose” (verse 1). The blind shall see, the deaf
shall hear, the lame shall walk, the dumb sing (verses 5 and 6).
Verses 8 and 9, speaking of the Highway of Holiness, state that
it will be for the “unclean,” but the unclean shall not pass
over it.
This interesting phrase can be
compared to an automatic car wash. It is for dirty cars, but
dirty cars don’t pass over it, because they are clean by the
time they reach the end of the car wash. Similarly, the Highway
of Holiness is for the morally unclean. Through the instruction
and nurture of Christ and his church, they will step by step be
made morally clean. Verse 9 shows no lion shall be there.
Peter identified Satan as
symbolized by the “lion” (1 Peter 5:8) and Revelation 20:1-3
reveals Satan will be bound (unable to tempt or hinder mankind)
during the 1,000-year Kingdom. “But the redeemed shall walk
there.” Verse 10 concludes, “And the ransomed [Jesus died a
ransom for ‘ALL,’ 1 Timothy 2:6] of the Lord shall return and
come to Zion [the Kingdom] with songs and everlasting joy upon
their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness and sorrow and
sighing shall flee away.” The climax of the Kingdom work is
described in Revelation 21:4, “And God shall wipe away all tears
from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither
sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for
the former things are passed away.”
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