Is God Fair?
Why
has God permitted 6,000 years of human woe and suffering?
By Herbert W. Armstrong
Look at the world today! War, famine,
pestilence! Poverty, inequality, hunger, want! Sickness, disease, suffering,
death! Crime, graft, dishonesty, corruption! insanity, degeneration, decay!
Unhappiness, fear, wretchedness and woe!
How, so many are asking, can a supreme,
all-powerful God of LOVE permit it?
WHY does God allow wrong governments? WHY
is He permitting civilization itself to crumble?
Listen! Some men are saying, "God
isn't fair!" or "Is there a God, after all?" But what do you
suppose men would say if God took away their right to think and do as they
please? For God could never stop this awful carnage without FORCING men to act
according to His will - denying them a free will of their own!
It is men's ways, so contrary to God's
ways, that have brought on this unhappy state. And they have brought on all the
world's sorrows and anguish in spite of the pleadings of God. He says,
"Your ways are not my ways."
God's ways, had they been followed, would
have led inevitably to peace, happiness, prosperity and joy. God always has
revealed to men His ways. Always He has pleaded with the human family.
Suppose God had taken the only
alternative. Suppose He had FORCED men, against their wills, to have lived
according to His laws?
Can't you almost hear the defiant,
rebellious, stiff-necked human race indignantly screaming at the Almighty,
"You can't cram your religion down my throat!" For it is a matter of
religion. Can't we see that, had God followed that course, more than ever men
would have shouted, "GOD ISN'T FAIR!"
For nearly 6,000 years men have lived in
defiance of God's laws. Had God denied them this right to be wrong, men would
have accused God of injustice, demanding freedom to follow their own ways.
God's plan has for its purpose the
creating of perfect CHARACTER in beings who are separate entities from God yet
members of the very Family of God. Character cannot be created automatically by
fiat - it must be developed through experience!
Nor could character be instilled without
free moral agency. To achieve this great purpose - that of producing the
supreme pinnacle of all God's creation, sons of God having perfect character -
man has to be convinced, of his own free will, that God's laws are JUST, and
that His ways are the only right ways for man! Man must turn to them,
voluntarily! This lesson could be learned only by EXPERIENCE!
In the beginning, Satan appeared to
contest the wisdom of God's law. This law is, simply, LOVE for God and love for
neighbour, as defined in the 10 broad principles of the Ten Commandments. A
fundamental, spiritual, eternal law. The philosophy Christ taught is that it is
more blessed to GIVE than to receive. But Satan argued for the GETTING way.
Competition, he argued, is the lifeblood of activity. Self-desire provides
incentive to endeavour. Vanity spurs to action. And so, in Satan's philosophy,
self-desire, competition, strife, provide the root-principle for accomplishment.
The way of GETTING is the way to progress and advancement.
Had not God permitted this selfish way to
be tried, tested and demonstrated, God's creatures could argue throughout
eternity that they had been denied the better way.
And so God turned over to Satan the first
six days of ONE WEEK, consisting of seven 1,000-year days, in which to
demonstrate the falsity of this way - the way of greed.
During the first six days of this week of
7,000 years Satan was permitted to retain DOMINION over all the earth.
"Six days," God said, "thou shalt labor and do all thy
work" - his work of deception and hate - "but the SEVENTH day is the
Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work." Six
1,000-year days have been permitted Satan for his labor of DECEPTION. Even then
his dominion has been limited to the power of influence and suggestion. Never
has God permitted even Satan arbitrarily to force men against their wills.
And so for 6,000 years men have been left
free to accept the self-seeking, competitive philosophy of Satan, or to follow
the Golden Rule of God. And for 6,000 years Satan has laboured. And mankind has
fallen for his delusion!
Satan's philosophy is the philosophy of
the world today. On it our present civilization has been built. A civilization
men love and cherish, and for which they patriotically sacrifice their lives! A
civilization developed on desire for self-gain, competition, strife! In it
success is determined by HOW MUCH a man has been able to GET, not on how well he
has served.
God has never left men in ignorance of the
TRUE way of life. Always He has made known the true values - the way of His
spiritual law of love! Continually God has pleaded, with patience and in love.
He set up a nation of His own on earth, pledged to follow His laws, dedicated
voluntarily to God's ways of life. But
God sent His only begotten Son to point
men back to the true paths. And Him, too, men rejected and killed!
During these 6,000 years since Adam, men
continually have spurned God's love, rejected His law, turned a deaf ear to His
prophets and His true ministers. They have built a world after the false
philosophy of Satan, replete with its pagan customs, traditions and beliefs.
Today people are hopelessly engulfed in these false ways, but, being deceived,
realize it not at all!
Satan is revealed as the "GOD of this
world" (II Corinthians 4:4). The original inspired Greek should properly
be translated "the god of this AGE." And this worldly civilization
worships its GOD. The appalling fact unrealized by the world is that Satan, not
the Eternal, is its god! The Creator God "is not the author of
confusion," we read in I Corinthians 14:33. Its real author is Satan, the
world's god! And so he has his many denominations and sects, all striving in a
There is just one thing, it seems, that
Satan's ministers can agree upon. "God's LAW," they chorus in unison,
"is DONE AWAY!" Yes, they have to tell that in order to draw their
salaries! Today the people of organized religion refuse to HEAR the law of the
Lord (Isaiah 30:8-11). They demand that their ministers preach the soft and
smooth things - the deceits! They have turned away from the TRUTH, and are
accepting and believing FABLES (II Timothy 4:2-4). They are BITTER against
God's law, and against the few who have courage today to proclaim the PLAIN
TRUTH of God's Word!
Yes, Satan has organized religion. He
himself appears, not as a devil with horns and a tail, bearing a pitchfork, but
"is transformed into AN ANGEL OF LIGHT" (II Corinthians
Satan's congregations go in for much FORM.
"Having a FORM of godliness, but denying the POWER thereof: from such turn
away," plainly warns God's Word! (II Timothy 3:5). The present worldly
order - its competitive principles, its customs and traditions, its political
systems - are upheld by Satan's churches within every land! Truly, ALL nations
are deceived! (Revelation 17:2, 18:3).
Jesus Christ appeared 1,900 years ago as a
messenger bearing a message from God. He brought to an unhappy world steeped in
false ways the "GOOD NEWS of the
Thank God, we are near the END of the six
working days allotted to Satan's dominion. God's 1,000-year Sabbath day is just
about to dawn!
There is a saying that it is darkest just
before the dawn. Now we see on every hand the final fruitage of men's ways.
Written in inerasable blood, in human misery, anguish and despair, is the
6,000-year record of EXPERIENCE!
Even now men will not heed this horrible
lesson - not until they are FORCED to see it!
But, as Satan's sixth "working
day" closes, God is about to step in and supernaturally to intervene!
The coming seventh millennium shall see
Satan restrained. Christ will return to rule the earth with all the power of
God. God's new order for the next thousand years will restore peace, happiness
and joy.
Then men may look back over this present
world and COMPARE! Never will God FORCE a single human being, against his own
will, into salvation and eternal life.
But, with the 7,000-year record of
EXPERIENCE set plainly before seeing eyes, do you think anyone will want to
return to these ways we seem now to love? Not many, you may be sure of that!
Yet some, even then, will rebel.
Finally the world shall acknowledge, of
its own free volition, that God's ways are right. Christ, says the scripture,
"learned obedience by the things which he suffered"! (Hebrews 5:8).
Even He who never did wrong! "And being MADE perfect" - through
experience - "he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that
obey him".
Someday we shall look upon God's plan with
breathtaking admiration and awe! The suffering of this present time shall have
faded completely from mind. The lessons of experience we shall have with us for
eternity! Finally humanity shall accept God's ways of life, KNOWING that they
are right ways. The happiness and joy we shall then experience cannot be
conceived by our minds today! Through all eternity we shall worship and praise
the Eternal God for His wisdom, His mercy, His LOVE!
Do you think anyone, then, will look back
and say, "God isn't fair"?