The family was shocked beyond comprehension! Caught in a snowstorm in Alaska, they had kept their heater running. The snow had piled high around the car and, without their knowledge, deadly carbon monoxide had seeped into the automobile. The gasheavier than airhad first reached their twin boys, asleep on the floor Groggy, wondering what was causing their sleepiness, the parents gradually became aware something was wrong. The father struggled to open the windows to change the air! They grasped their twin baby boys-shook them, rubbed their little arms and tried frantically to awaken them. But it was too late! Their cries of anguish were lost in the blackness of that Alaskan night with its billions of softly falling flakes. But WHY? WHY, if there is a loving God in heaven, do such tragedies strike? WHY DID GOD LET THOSE BABY BOYS DIE?
By Garner Ted Armstrong
The
preceding story was related to me by the father of the boys, an executive in the radio
business from Alaska, when he attended the National Association of Broadcasters convention
in Chicago, Illinois.
I had been invited to give the
invocation at a dinner for about 2,000 radio-station owners and managers from all over the
country; the main speaker that day was Paul Harvey.
During the recess after lunch, one of
the radio executives asked if he might ask me a personal question. He then related the
tragic story of his two baby sons' death. He had already asked his own pastor, or perhaps
two or more ministers. He and his wife were searching for some understanding; they needed
to know WHYWHY would a loving God allow this to happen?
How WOULD YOU ANSWER?
If there IS a God, and if GOD IS LOVE,
then WHY?
Now, if someone asks some other person
that question, he has a perfect out. All most people have to do is to cluck away
sympathetically, or, if genuine emotion is really felt, show some sincere empathy with
such a tragically bewildered parent. However, it only requires a polite disclaimer:
"I've always wondered about that too," or, "Well, I don't know. I
lost a son in Vietnam, and I have never understood why he had to die when all these
others..."
But this was different.
I am a minister.
He had asked a minister: a man who had
been preaching the Word of God over his radio station for years, a man who had just
finished delivering a heartfelt prayer to God in front of 2,000 hard-bitten businessmen.
No minister could simply shake his head
and profess he didn't have the answer to such a tragic, perplexing question. But
the gentleman told me he had already asked two or three others, and they merely muttered
something vague about "mysterious" ways of God and faith and such, and allowed
as how "His ways are past finding out."
By the time the man and his wife
wrestled with these vague generalities for a while, they were as distraught and puzzled as
ever. Hurt, bewildered, feeling deserted in their most desperate hour of need, they kept
reliving their anguished attempts for hour upon hour to revive their twin boys, their
frantic mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, their desperate tears, their prayers.
"WHY DID GOD LET MY TWO BABY BOYS
DIE?"
I began to explain.
Tragediesby the Millions
I told the man I
could only try to understand the depth of his grief and that I would fall shortthat
only a parent who had actually experienced such heartbreak could really empathize
with him. Then, in nowhere near so detailed a fashion, I began to explain why God had not
stepped in to prevent their deaths.
The man and his wife were not alone in
their suffering.
That same nightfrom Africa to
Japan, from China to Brazil, from Canada to Australiamillions of tragedies were
unfolding. Tiny babies were dying of malnutrition and starvation, a slow, terrible death
of hunger far different from drifting off to sleep, the sleep becoming deeper and deeper
until death.
I mentioned, without attempting to
overstate the case, about the distraught parents I had seen interviewed on TV whose
children had been kidnapped and killed, about the hundreds of automobile accidents that
same night, about those born deformed, blind and diseased. I tried to show, in a brief few
moments, that the whole world "groans and travails in pain" (Romans 8:22).
In war, it seems, it is always the
innocent bystander, the children, the women and the elderly, who are victimized. Today, in
nations all over the world, vicious terrorism is aimed at the helpless civilians whose
only crime is being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Despots carry out vicious
pogroms, attempting to eliminate all opposition.
WHY do about 50,000 Americans die every
year in automobile accidents? What about the tens of thousands who LIVE THROUGH THE
ACCIDENTS to spend the remainder of their lives disfigured, crippled and in pain?
And WHY WAR?
WHY does God allow such a mountainous
pile of human woe and misery? Human ears cannot hear the wails and weeping of the hundreds
of thousands, the screams and sobs of the injured and dying, the moans of those in their
hospital beds. But GOD CAN!
So WHY does HE ALLOW IT?
If God is God, then He is ALL-powerful!
God's Word says He knows every hair on your head, every sparrow that falls. He says He
cares even for the birds that fly and other living creaturesand that HE CARES FOR
YOU!
Then WHY?
Not God's World?
This is not God's
world! That's right, it is not God's world, not His society, not His social,
economic, religious, cultural or governmental system. It belongs exclusively to man,
but it is under the invisible sway of a great archdemon called Satan the devil!
He is called the "god of this
world." Notice! "In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them
which believe not..." (II Corinthians 4:4). He is the "prince of the power of
the air" (Ephesians 2:2), utilizing the very elements (as in the case of
Job and the whirlwind that destroyed his family) of this earth for his evil purposes.
He is a "roaring lion" walking
about, seeking "whom he may devour" (I Peter 5:8). He is that great
fallen archangel, called a "dragon," who deceives the whole world! (Revelation
12:9). He currently possesses rulership, the control and sway over governments of the
world, over the nations.
On the other hand, God says the
"world is mine, and the fullness thereof!" God is the supreme RULER in heaven
who says, "Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the
small dust of the balance: behold he taketh up the isles as a very little thing ... It is
He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as
grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a
tent to dwell in..." (Isaiah 40:15-22).
How can this be?
Is it Satan's world? Or is it God's
world?
The answer is it is GOD'S EARTH, God's
"world," in the sense of the good green spaceship earth He gives us to live on
and from which we came. But it is SATAN'S SOCIETY, Satan's CIVILIZATION!
Jesus prayed: "I have given them
thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am
not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but
that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.
"They are not of the
world" (John 17:14-16).
From the Beginning
From the very
beginning of recorded civilizationfrom the Garden of Edenmankind has rejected
God's laws, God's way of life, God's rule over mankind! Adam and Eve began the
first "scientific experiments in attempting to follow Satan's wily
"advice" and try to determine for themselves, apart from God's revealed
knowledge, whether the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was fit for them.
From the days of the ancient patriarchal
society until the flood, only a small handful of men would follow God's laws, His way of
life. The majority went their own way until God said, "My spirit shall not always
strive with man, for that he also is flesh..." (Genesis 6:3), and the whole world,
save Noah and his family, was destroyed by a flood.
Soon Nimrod, a "mighty
hunter," and his mother-wife, Semiramis, a high priestess of Baal worship, organized
some of the first cities on earth, gathering people together into a manmade
"society," the first true "city-states" of history. He built
Babel (called Babylon), and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar (Chaldea)
(Genesis 10: 9, 10).
By the time of Abraham, the whole of the
earth, save a tiny handful of men who were obedient to God's laws, was in the spiritual
darkness of Satan's sway, having gone into polytheism (the worship of nonexistent pagan
"gods" of their own imagination) and suffering every evil as the result.
Following the generations of Abraham, to
his grandson Jacob (whose name was changed to "Israel") and his sons, who are
the progenitors of the "twelve tribes of Israel," the Bible shows God once again
intervened in the affairs of manmade governments. He called HIS OWN NATION out of slavery,
under Moses, and established them as a "kingdom," a human society under an
appointed human government, which was under God!
But, even before coming to Sinai
and the giving of the Ten Commandments, the people began to murmur against Moses and began
rejecting the government of God!
"How long refuse ye to keep my
commandments and my laws?" asked God, before He gave the codified Decalogue! (Exodus
16:28).
Then came the delivery of the Ten
Commandments. One of the most important principles of Scripture is revealed in that
context during the great and awesome ceremony of the quaking, smoking and fiery mountain,
the giving of the Ten Commandments and the people's acceptance of God's laws!
Earlier the people had said, "All
that the Eternal hath spoken we will do" (Exodus 19:8). But, following the
spectacular sights of the mount, and the delivery of the law, notice what happened!
"And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the
trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood
afar off.
"And they said unto Moses, Speak
thou with us, and we will hear: but LET NOT GOD SPEAK WITH US, lest we die" (Exodus
20:18,19). The people didn't want any direct communication from God; they wanted
God to go off somewhere and disappear and not frighten them like that; they wanted a
go-between, an intermediary!
Following the establishment of Israel in
their own homeland, God ruled over the people through His human servants the judges. It
was like a theocracy: God dealing directly with the judges and they in turn dealing with
the people.
But during Samuel's day the people
decided they wanted a KING, just like other nations! They wanted a tall, attractive, human
ruler, a person who would be a mighty military leader, a person of striking appearance
and charm. "But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge
us. And Samuel prayed unto the Eternal.
"And the Eternal said unto Samuel,
Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not
rejected thee, but they have rejected ME, that I SHOULD NOT REIGN OVER THEM!" (I
Samuel 8:6,7).
Through Ezekiel, God showed that His
people had continually REJECTED His laws, His statutes, His WAY OF LIFE, down through the
centuries! "Because they had not executed my judgments, but had despised my statutes,
and had polluted my Sabbaths, and their eyes were after their father's idols. Wherefore I
gave them [over to] also statutes that were NOT good, and judgments whereby they should
NOT live. And I polluted them in their own gifts [pagan sacrifices], in that they caused
to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to
the end that they might know that I am the Eternal" (Ezekiel 20:24-26).
Over and over again, God's Word stresses
how His people TURNED AWAY FROM HIM! Time and again He shows how the "whole world
lies in darkness" and says, "There is NONE that is good, no not one!"
From the days of the ancient Israelites
until now, people have not wanted God to interfere in their daily lives!
Put another way: People don't want God
"Sticking His nose into their business"! They want to be FREE to make choices
and decisions, live their lives as THEY see fit without any outside interference,
restrictions, laws or penalties!
Notice! In speaking of the period of the
judges God says, "In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that
which was right in his own eyes" (Judges 17:6), and "In those days there was no
king in Israel: every man did that which was right in HIS OWN eyes!" (Judges 21:25).
This is the LAST verse of one of the bloodiest books in the Bible-filled with the wars,
murders, intrigue and heartache of carnal human nature. And the reason for all this
is plainly stated: "Every man did that which was fight in his OWN eyes!"
That is the very ESSENCE of human
nature!
Human nature is vanity, jealousy, ego,
greed and lust! It is a SELF-oriented, SELF-willed, SELF-determined, SELF-centered spirit
of SELF-seeking! Perfect self (complete, not "perfect" spiritually) is found in
the major ingredients of self: (1) self-preservation, (2) self-determination and (3)
self-perpetuation!
People do NOT WANT GOD INTERFERING IN
THEIR PRIVATE, PERSONAL LIVES!
Consider the smoker or drinker, or the
person who habitually exaggerates or lies. Do such persons want an invisible presence to
STOP them from reaching for their cigarettes? Do they want God, in unseen, spiritual
POWER, to PREVENT them from satisfying their physical lusts? Would a person wish God to prevent
him from tipping a glass of liquor to his lips or cause him to be tongue-tied and
UNABLE to speak each time he lies or exaggerates?
Can you imagine the scene?
A person would attempt to reach into his
shirt pocket for a cigarette. But a strange look would come over his face as his arm
stopped halfway up, and his fingers could not reach his shirt! He would struggle, try his
other arm, try forcing the one arm up there with the other hand! His face would grow
beet-red with anger and frustration! He would begin to thrash around in his chair and then
fall to the floor in every conceivable, contorted position. He would desperately struggle
to reach those cigarettes! He would be screaming, yelling, and cursing! He would call upon
a friend and ask him to give him a cigarette, only to find the friend, TOO,
couldn't reach HIS!
Can you imagine it? They would probably
go completely CRAZY in frustrationprobably go mad.
No, people don't WANT God around on a
moment-to-moment-basis, interfering in their private lives, forcing them to do what is
RIGHT and what is GOOD for them, instead of allowing them to do what is NOT RIGHT
and what is BAD for them.
It is Your Own Choice
You are a free moral
agent! You are a creature of free choice. God MADE you that way! You are a tiny spark of
life in the black vastness of a limitless universes human being, on planet earth, with the
vast potential of being made a very son of God, being born into His very FAMILY someday,
becoming LIKE HIM! (I John 3:2).
But, believe it or not, God has not
willed to produce "Instant character"!
He knows that perfect character takes
VOLITION; it takes the cooperation of the person who is building that character!
Character is the ability to discern the right from the wrong, and then the WILLpower to
FORCE the self to CHOOSE THE RIGHT WAY!
That is a choice God will NEVER make for
you!
Notice this! "See, I have set before
thee this day life and good, death and evil; in that I command thee this day to love the
Eternal thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments, and his statutes and
his judgments, that thou mayest LIVE AND MULTIPLY: and the Eternal thy God shall bless
thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it.
"But if thine heart turn away, so
that thou wilt not hear, but shall be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them;
"I denounce unto you this day, that
ye shall surely PERISH, and that ye shall NOT prolong your days upon the land, whither
thou passest over to Jordan to go to possess it.
"I call heaven and earth to record
this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing:
therefore CHOOSE LIFE, that both thou and thy seed may live" (Deuteronomy 30:14-19).
God says we must CHOOSE!
He earnestly hopes, yearns and wishes
that we might choose the way HE wants us to chooseto choose life! But He
decreed that WE MUST MAKE A CHOICE!
Few realize that by delaying their
choiceputting off their choice, as if attempting to defer the final day
when they must "choose ye this day whom ye shall serve," as Elijah said to those
who were following the prophets of Baalthey are actually CHOOSING DEATH! By failing
to choose LIFE, they do not realize they are NEGLECTING salvation!
"How shall we escape, if we NEGLECT
so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was
confirmed unto us by them that heard him ... ?" (Hebrews 2:3).
We are completely free to CHOOSE the way
of life we wish.
Do you know you could choose, if you
wish, to WORSHIP THE DEVIL? God will not interfere. He will not intervene. You are free to
do so if you so will it.
Many times sincere Christians are simply
AMAZED at how God seems to stand by, NOT PREVENTING evil actions of evil men. Years of
patient service, of church-going, prayers, study and striving to live a clean, righteous
life can make many people unaware of the immense capacity for EVIL of other men.
Often the sincere sheep of Christ's fold are simply AMAZED that God seems to allow various
assorted forms of evil to occur, almost as if, once a person is in God's own protections
member of the very Body of Christ, the Churchit is IMPOSSIBLE for him to act in such
a terrible fashion!
Many times people are INCREDULOUS that
God "permits" other men to act in satanic, evil fashionfailing to realize
that God DOES NOT DEAL IN PREVENTIVE LAW!
This is a vitally important point!
It is paramount in understanding WHY
God allows human tragedy, human suffering or human failure!
Think for a moment! Do the Ten
Commandments PREVENT SIN? No, they only point out WHAT IT IS! They tell men: DO NOT SIN!
God shows elsewhere (Romans 6:23) that
the wages of sin is death, death for all eternity, death from which there is no
resurrection! He says (Romans 3:23) that all have sinned and come short of the
glory of God. Could anything be clearer, concerning the LACK OF intervention in His
creation, the attitude of letting MAN make the decisions, the concept of free moral
agency? Call it a "hands off" policy, if you will!
God says, "DON'T SIN!"
He says, "CHOOSE LIFE!"
He urges men NOT to sin, and then shows
that all have sinned! He shows, then, that HE HAS NOT PREVENTED man from sinning!
The law existsimmutable, unchangeable and eternal. But the law of God is not being
enforced by unseen policemen. There are no arrests made for breaking it, only for breaking
the laws of man, if and when some of man's laws happen, albeit by accident, to overlap the
laws of God.
No attorney files charges against you
for lusting, for having another god in place of the real God, for lying, stealing or
Sabbath-breaking. No judge passes sentence on you to punish you for these sins, which God
says are worthy of the death sentence!
But God DOES take note! In His heavenly
"court" each sin is carefully noted, each infraction written down, as it were.
But, when those sins are REPENTED of, the slate is wiped clean through the atoning blood
of Christ, and God says He will remove your sins as "far as the east is removed from
the west," and "their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more!"
(Hebrews 8:12).
Though God's law is SPIRITUAL, and just,
and holy, and good (Romans 7:12-14), it is not yet being enforced in human
societies! Though there is an automatic penalty for breaking God's lawsthe
penalties of sullied conscience, broken character and ruined livesthe millions are
UNAWARE that their daily problems come from the consequences of rejecting God's laws, from
inviting God to "get out" of their lives!
So God pleads with all flesh to CHOOSE
LIFE. He shows we are free moral agents, free to make any choice we please. He shows that
He will notNOT YETinterfere with whatever choice we make, even though He
urges us to make the RIGHT one!
Choosing to repentto get on your
knees before your God and your Savior, Jesus Christ, and call out to Him for forgiveness
for your sins, to ask Him for His saving grace, the undeserved PARDON for iniquities, to
apply the sacrifice of His shed blood to cover YOUR sinsall this is YOUR PERSONAL,
PRIVATE CHOICE!
When and if you ever MAKE that choice,
then, and not until then, will God begin intervening in YOUR PERSONAL, PRIVATE
LIFE!
"Just in Case"
Millions have a
"just in case" religion! They may go to religious services a few times a year,
or even regularly, as a habit, as a part of the expected daily way of life of a religious
community.
But many of these same people would not
hesitate to lie just a little, to cheat a little, to minimize or exaggerate the truth just
a little, to lust after material goods or other persons, to dishonor their parents or cut
a few corners on their income tax reports, or to break God's Sabbath day in either
ignorance or intent.
But when trouble strikes they
hope God will be RIGHT THEREon the spot, NOW!
It has been said there are no atheists
to be found on life rafts after days at sea with no food and water; no atheists to be
found hopelessly lost in the woods; no skeptics, doubters and agnostics suspended by a
fraying rope near the bottom of a well.
Dozens of thrilling escape
storieswhether during war or from the hazards of shipwreck, landslide, flood or
firerelate how people, in extreme moments of terrible stress and fright, will call
out to God!
Usually they're PRETTY DIRECT ABOUT IT!
Though they may be a little embarrassed
by having to "say grace" over a meal, or be called upon for a reading or a
prayer in churchmaybe a little taken aback by being chosen to prepare a study for
the businessman's Bible studynow, suddenly, they cut through all the embarrassment,
all the formality! They call out to God, probably even forgetting to say anything
by way of introduction! Thousands have yelled at the top of their lungs, "O GOD!
SAVE ME! "
Sometimes God has done just that! Other
times it seemed He didn't hear or didn't act!
Who can say why, in different
circumstances?
But many a person has made a
"pact" with God in such times of dire stress. A famous movie star had a skiing
accident on the slopes. A ski pole became embedded in his chest and actually partially
pierced the outer wall of the heart! He was millimeters from death. A big, rugged,
muscular man, about six feet, six or seven inches and extremely handsome and masculine, he
lay there with the realization death was upon him.
Months later, after skilled surgeons and
specialists had removed the deadly metal and attended his wounds, he had recovered. He
related on national television how he had come to a very deep, personal relationship with
God during that time, that he had dedicated his life to an entirely new set of values and
standards, that the very purpose in living and the meaning of death had become
profoundly interesting and important to him.
How many people have called out, "O
God, if you'll only do this or that or the other, then I'll do this and that and the
other"? How many millions have silently promised they'll quit smoking, or cussing, or
drinking; that they'll start going to church somewhere or in other ways "turn over a
new leaf' and start cleaning up their lives, if only God will grant them a special
miracle, perhaps save the life of a loved one, a child?
MILLIONS suspect there may be a God.
They express it in many ways, usually in
vague terms about the "great Someone out there somewhere," as in "somebody
up there likes me!"
And those suspicions are right. There
IS A GOD! And, without their knowing it, He is only a prayer away. He is NEAR unto those
who call upon Himnot "way off somewhere" in the great nothingness of
space, unable to intervene or help!
But, you see, there is an AUTOMATIC
breaking of that connection, just like someone blowing up a power station and plunging a
whole city into blackness, if you only give token lip service to Him, only have Him
in your mind "just in case," but do not let him RULE in your daily life!
All have sinned! And sin is the
transgression of God's perfect LAW, the Ten Commandments! (I John 3:4). Jesus said,
"REPENT ye, and believe the gospel!" (Mark 1: 15).
This is the same as saying CHOOSE LIFE!
But, by merely living what most people
would call a "good life" apart from the daily obedience to God's perfect
law, you AUTOMATICALLY separate yourself from God! HE DOES NOT SEPARATE HIMSELF
FROM YOU; it is YOU who breaks the "circuit."
The Holy Spirit of God is described by
Jesus Christ as "rivers of living water" (John 7:38). He describes God's
Spirit as wind that flows back and forth (John 3:8). Electricity and magnetism are
not "inventions of man" but the miracles of a divine Creator Being who set in
motion the forces, energies and laws that regulate matter! There is DUALITY throughout
God's creation. Positive and negative, north and south, the magnetic poles of the earth!
You have been created to need God's
Holy Spirit! The "spirit in man," which is that spiritual essence that lifts the
brain of man to the level of MIND, far, far above that of animals, is capable of being begotten
with GOD'S HOLY SPIRIT! Think for a moment of the analogy of human, physical
birth! The male sperm cell must unite with the female and the union of the two
produces a new, separate HUMAN LIFE!
Christ is the firstborn of many brethren
(Romans 8:29), and we are to become HEIRS of God, BORN of God, by a resurrection When we
are BEGOTT'EN of God, a new spiritual being has begun, is being formed, as surely
as tiny, microscopic human babies begin in the womb of the mother at conception!
But God's Holy Spirit doesn't enter our
elbow, or our knee, or our big toe! It comes INTO OUR MIND! Perhaps we are
"negative" and God's Spirit could be likened to "positive." When the
TWO unite, a spark of life is struck, a current begins to flow, and we are spiritually
alive!
When you turn on your light switch, you are
establishing a connection which permits a current of electricity to flow! The
current flows through the incandescent bulb, heating its element white hot and
giving off light. Break the current and the light is shut off!
God Almighty is NEAR to those who want
to establish a DAILY RELATIONSHIP with Him, who want to receive of HIS HOLY SPIRIT through
repentance, baptism and the laying on of hands! But those who have NOT received of that
Spirit are NOT CONNECTED to Godthere is a barrier between them, a separation!
But WHO CAUSED THAT SEPARATION? Who
threw the switch? Who cut off whom? People wonder why God does not seem to be
instantly available when they need Himand usually they only need Him when they
really "need" Him.
"Behold, the Eternal's hand is not
shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: but your
sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear" (Isaiah 59:1,2).
No, God is not inferior, ill-equipped or
unable; HE is not weak or sleepy and inattentive to answer when we call, but He says OUR
SINS have created a BARRIER between the human race and God! He says WE are responsible for
"pulling the plug" and causing that separation! He says WE are the ones who have
broken the circuitHE isn't! God says we have it backwards!
He says we ought to be asking, "O
man, where were you when you needed God?" NOT asking, "O GOD, WHERE WERE
YOU WHEN I NEEDED YOU?"
The difference is, we need God ALL the
time, and we begin to think we only need Him in emergencies!
But most people do not feel they are
separated from God, do not feel cut off, rejected of Him, as if they are outcasts and contrary
to God! Most people feel they are reasonably "good," that they are
undeserving of life's tragedies, miseries, disappointments and unhappiness.
Millions of us ask, "Why me, O
Lord?" when problems come.
Being Carnal is not an Insult
What is our
"goodness" before God? Millions of us feel we're not so bad, feel we're making
reasonable efforts at being good peopleminding our manners, being friendly, striving
to measure up to acceptable behavior before our friends and neighbors. Millions of us
might be embarrassed to sit down to dinner with robbers or murderers. We don't count
ourselves "criminal" or "bad people" in any sense of the words. We do
the best we can. So what's wrong with that?
There may not be all that much
"wrong" with millions of people who feel they are "good people" in the
sense of criminally wrong, evil through and through. Oh, they might scream or yell at
their mate, or cuss just a little now and then, or maybe they smoke, or some of the more
liberated ones even sample a little marijuana on occasion. Probably they don't feel
especially sullied at going to R-rated movies or telling sex-oriented stories or
purchasing one of the many pornographic magazines.
Life the way millions live it can be
pretty tedious. What with the continual conversations about injustices on the job, low pay
and high prices, terrible tax burdens, consumer rip-offs by profiteering companies who
seem to care more for the dollar than their customers' health or wellbeing, it's enough to
keep most people a little on the sour side.
We have our minds on the mundane, the
day-to-day struggles of living in this clashing crescendo of too much, to fast, too soon,
or not enough, not when we want it, and much too late. We're occupied with ourselves, our
own self-struggles, the day-to-day pursuits that secretly drive us, that urge us onward,
that make us what we are.
"For they that are after the flesh
do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the
Spirit" (Romans 8:5).
To be "after the flesh," the
way the old King James translation has it, means merely to be human, to be earthly,
fleshly and minding the things of our own humanity. It is not meant to be an insult,
saying we're less than human or somehow so evil that we ought to be taking the
kicks and curses every day. It is only stating the simple facts of our fleshly humanity.
"For to be carnally minded is
death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace" (Romans 8:6).
These same millions, including millions
of church-going people who feel they are "good folks," can be carnally minded.
That is, they are mostly concerned, in a day-to-day sense, with the problems of our own
environment, our own personal problems, our desires, hopes, dreams, lusts, secret inner
urges, our irritations, jealousies, resentments and hates.
The word "carnal" means
"fleshly." In Spanish, the word for meat is carne. When you buy a can of
"chili con came" you're reading a Spanish label, not an English one, which says
you're buying chili with meat in it. Perhaps God means to tell us all we're really only a
group of "meatheads" who think in the mundane sphere of our own personal,
physical senses, looking out at the
world around us as though we wore the proverbial card shark's green eyeshade, pulled well
over our brows, so we can see only the "around," only the immediate horizon,
never looking up, as it were, at the broader vastness of God's great realm in the whole
universe.
God doesn't mean to insult us by
telling us we're carnal! Our babies are born that waywe were that wayand there
is nothing sweeter to loving parents or to God Himself, probably than a newborn, tiny
baby.
Perfect humanity, perfect carnality
(which is not perfect in a spiritual sense, but is "complete" in its
fleshliness, its earthliness), is pretty well incorporated in the mind of a tiny child.
Innocent of any evil thoughts in a calculating way, the little baby is nevertheless a
collection of the unbridled, unrestrained, uncontrollable impulses, emotions, bodily
processes, lusts, appetites and fleshly senses that make us what we are. Hungry? The child
will cry, waving its little arms and legs about, knowing no other way to express the
physical discomfiture or to cry out for the warm, satisfying feeling of a full tummy and
mother's comforting smell and touch. So what's so ugly about the carnality of a sweet
baby? Nothing ugly about it at all; it's the way we were MADE! But we were created as if
partially incomplete! We were created as a potentially far greater being
than we are! Our great potential, our immense, awesome, breathtaking spiritual
possibilitiesare beyond our human comprehension!
God has made us as vessels, incomplete
without the missing ingredient of His Holy Spirit! Without it we can still be
"good" part of the time or even most of the time. "Good," that is,
according to man's own rationale, according to the assessment of the world around us,
which the Bible proves is not God's world, but under the invisible sway of the archenemy
of mankind, Satan! (II Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 2:2; Revelation 12:9).
Within our humanly devised societies, we
can conform to standards that we feel are good and decent and still be totally
"carnally minded" in the sense that we are omitting a vast dimension from
our lives, NEGLECTING to do many things which God wants us to doomitting thought,
commitment and action which we should have as a very part of our beings!
God does not hate these carnal vessels
He has created and made subject to vanities! "For the earnest expectation of the
creation waits for the manifestation of the sons of God [the resurrection to
IMMORTALITY!]. For the creation was made subject to vanity [a useless striving after wind,
false goals, false hopes, false objectives], not willingly, but by reason of him
who has subjected the same in hope"' (Romans 8:19,20).
God is the Designer of the human mind
and body, and He designed our human minds to need His Spirit! Without it we are
carnal, taking chances with every other person in a fatalistic, worldwide game of
"Russian roulette."
Here we are in a motorized, mechanized,
glittering world of technology, of machines and smoking engines, of aircraft, ships,
trains and automobiles, of rushing traffic, humming elevators, screeching subways, purring
fans and silent electrical switches. Sometimes our machines betray us, as did the
automobile on the black, frozen night on the road from Fairbanks to Anchorage when a
couple cried out in their anguish and despair.
From the hapless millions of the
"third world," the "have-nots" of the world who suffer from
malnutrition and starvation, to the more than 50,000 Americans who die every year in
automobile accidents, we take our chances with life-separated from God's daily
intervention, carnally minded (which is "death," eventually), living our lives
as best we can and looking about in outrage, bewilderment, helplessness, anger and shock
when sudden tragedy overtakes us, wondering, "Why me, O Lord?"
No, it's no insult to be carnally
mindedto be told we arebut it is an insult to God for us to STAY that way once
we know!
Time and Chance, and Circumstance
People of all races,
languages and religions have differing concepts of God, of life, and death, and the
hereafter. By the millions we humans like to believe our own concepts are the best.
After all, it is our concepts we live with, not those of others.
Millions of us like to imagine, we have
some sort of halfway relationship with "God," either a cozy, personal
relationship or a more distant, philosophical, fatalistic one. But the instant tragedy
strikesthe moment we feel we really NEED the quick intervention of Godwe call
out to our concept, to our God, and stand bewildered, hurt and confused if the answer we
seek is not immediately forthcoming.
The Greeks at Ephesus, in the first
century, had many concepts of divinity. They were polytheistic, believing in
"Diana" of Ephesus, to whom a massive, elaborate temple was dedicated, complete
with its own prostitutes, whose trade was a practical part of the temple worship. There
was "Askiepios," the great "healing god," who had another temple, and
various ones dedicated to the cult of the worship of the emperor.
The people were as real as you or I.
They had concepts of a god, or perhaps
several gods. And to them, as they talked to their gods and fingered their amulets, or
prayed to their little statues in the niches of their homes or went to one of the awe
inspiring temple services to watch the sacrifice of animals, or perhaps even of humans,
they were quite "aware" of the other world in which their various deities dwelt.
They too had their concepts. They too
had various cozy, personal relationships with the ideas in their own minds.
But Paul said of these Greeks' former
way of life, "That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and
WITHOUT GOD in the world" (Ephesians 2:12).
Oh, they thought they were godly
enough; they went to their religious services, they had their philosophic and even deeply
personal relationships with their various "gods." Perhaps, in their own way,
according to their own sociological customs and traditions, they were good people"
too.
But Paul said, "Wherein in time
past you lived according to the course of this societyaccording to the prince of the
power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedienceamong
whom we all had our daily way of life in times past following lusts of our flesh,
fulfilling the desires and appetites of our physical bodies, and of our minds. And we
were, naturally, the children of wrath and hatreds, just like other people. But God, who
is rich in mercy, for His great love toward us ... has raised us up together and made us
sit in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:2-6 paraphrased).
Though the Greeks in Ephesus were
"good Greeks" in many waysand though they thought they had a
relationship with "God" in one way or anotherthe truth was they were
"without Christ" and without God in the world!
But, people reason, they just
were dumb, polytheistic, ancient Greeks, and we know better!
But DO WE, really?
Then why do we observe some of the same
ceremonies and customs they did? Why do we call our months by the wrong numbers and pagan
names? Janus was a pagan deity, and we still use "January"; September is the
ninth month, but "September" means the seventh, "October" the eighth,
"November" the ninth and "December" the tenth, when they're actually
the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth. That's because pagan Roman emperors had to name
months after themselves, to elevate themselves to the level of "Juno" the
goddess of love, sex and fertility (which is why we have "June brides"), so,
when Julius Caesar gave himself thirty-one days, Augustus, not to be outdone, decided to
have the same number and "stole" the day from "February."
Millions still observe the "Satumalia" under the name of
"Christmas" with its symbols of sex and fertility (holly berries and mistletoe),
with its identical trappings of the same ceremony that antedates all Christianity.
We observe, by the millions, the same
"Ishtar" (pronounced "Easter") in commemoration of Nimrod's wife,
Semiramis, found as "Isis" among the Egyptians and "Diana" among the
Ephesians and Greeks. The trappings are the same: rabbits for rapid procreation and
fertility, eggs as a sign of life and sex, lilies because of their obvious symbolism
representing copulationbut the same millions who do all this do not see the ancient
pagan mysticism and instead claim to see "Christ."
In these and literally dozens of other ways, we
live our daily lives in a paganized society, oblivious of the origins of our customs and
rarely, if ever, asking WHY we do the things we do!
In our own way, we are just as paganized and
"without God in the world" as were the ancient Ephesians and Greeks. The
difference is, our names for God are not "Zeus," or "Diana," or
"Askelepios"; they are "God" and "Jesus."
But do these names we use remind us of the real
divinity of which they speak? A name should have meaning; it should convey the personality
and being of the person or object being named. Many times, in discussion, someone has
asked you if you knew a certain person. Your mind scans your memory bank of that name and
tries to select a face, color of hair, a personality. Sometimes you have made the mistake
of saying you thought so and found later that you didn't really know the person being
spoken ofIt was someone else. Sometimes you have answered yes and you were right.
Job thought he knew "God." He prayed,
worshiped, spoke endlessly of this "God" he thought he knew. Read the laborious
arguments he advanced in his own self-righteous cause against his antagonists in the book
of Job! But finally God Himself spoke with Job, as the account goes, and began showing Job
some things about the real GodHis creativity, His omniscience and His power! In
self-effacing humility, and in near shock over his stunned surprise at the great magnitude
of Godat the incredible difference between the way he had imagined God to be and the
way He really wasJob said, "...I have spoken things I didn't understand, things
too wondrous for my mind, which I didn't even know. Hear, I beseech You, and I will speak;
I will urgently request of You, and please tell meI have heard of You, God, by the
hearing of the earbut now my mind's eye REALLY SEES You. Because of this I abhor
myself and repent in dust and ashes!" (Job 42:3 paraphrased).
Like millions of us today, Job had a concept in
his mind about "God." When the name was spoken, his memory caused a certain
image to leap into his mind. But, without his realizing it, the image that came to mind
was false, a false image, just as surely as if Job were guilty of
"idolatry," of having another "god" before the REAL Goda
different personality and being from the REAL God. The ancient Ephesians were not
different. They too had various false, imaginary images of who "God" was, and
they were even farther afield than Job.
What about you? What about those who suffer
with the day-to-day fatalisms of time, and chance, and circumstance? Most have totally
false, ethereal concepts of "Jesus Christ" and "God"
Millions do not know the REAL God, the
real Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
So, clothed in our own "goodness,"
rationalizing ourselves into a reasonably acceptable behavioral pattern, thinking our own
thoughts of religion, philosophy and moral codes, we feel cheated, hurt, bewildered,
betrayed, when terrible times strike!
Jesus knew people were perplexed with these
same questions during His day!
There had been two sensational mass
deathsone a mass murder, the other sheer accidentwherein many died. People
were asking the same questions then that they ask today. "Why those poor people?
Where was God when they needed Him? Why did God allow this to happen?"
Some of the religious leaders may have been
equally as cruel, shallow and guilt-ridden as some today and might have answered,
"Perhaps there were lessons they needed to learn."
But does someone "learn a lesson" who
is suddenly killed by tons of falling brick and mortar? Does a tiny, sweet child, going to
sleep against the cold in a stalled car and then slipping into death through breathing
poisonous gas, learn something? Do the anguished parents need this brutal lesson to shock
some terrible sins out of their own lives?
Many miss the point entirely!
This is NOT GOD'S world! The millions have
invited God OUT of their lives through their own free choice, and God is cooperating with
themshowing it is our own way of life, our "sins and iniquities" (which we
call "good") that have separated us from God.
We are "without God" in the world, in
spite of our form of religion!
Jesus was asked about two tragedies by people
who had the same ideas of mysterious, selective punishment. "There were present at
that season some that told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their
sacrifices.
"And Jesus answering said unto the,
Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they
suffered such things? I tell you NO! But, except you repent, you shall likewise
perish!" (Luke 13:1-3).
Jesus was not saying these men
"deserved" some terrible deathhaving been discovered sacrificing in some
manner against Pilate's decrees and having been summarily murdered on the spot! He said NO
to the idea they must have been guilty of greater sin and specially singled out for God's
wrath! He said, in effect, it was simply a matter of "time, and chance, and
circumstance." And, except we repent, except we break down that barrier that
separates us from God, except we establish a daily connection with HIM, "you
shall all likewise perish." He means we are only out here, in our technological world
of machines which sometimes betrays us, taking our chances APART from any direct
interference from God one way or the other!
He continued, "Or those eighteen, upon
whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them. Do you suppose they were sinners above all
the men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you No, but, except you REPENT, you shall
all likewise perish!" (Luke 13:4,5).
Here He speaks of sheer chance. A mere
accident. Ancient mortar finally loosened from its hundreds of years' exposure to the wind
and rain and a section of tower wall came crashing down on a group of eighteen men! This
tragedy was well known, a mass death. The people had come to Jesus plainly puzzled over
the deep spiritual questions about these two cases of mass deathone plain murder and
the other sheer chance. Obviously, since Jesus so strongly addresses the questions of
"sinners above all else," the people had supposed this was the case. They were
assuming God was RIGHT THERE. They assumed these men were going about their daily
lives with their own concepts, their own values and standards, their own personal
relationships with "God," and could not imagine why that "God" was not
INSTANTLY there to PREVENT such terrible tragedies!
Jesus showed God had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT
WHATSOEVER!
God was not even IN the
picturefor He had not been INVITED in! No, these men were not "sinners
above all else"; they were sinners JUST LIKE everybody else! They didn't
think of themselves as "sinners," for most human beings have trouble living with
too much of a guilt complex. They, like most of us, probably rationalize around in their
minds to the point they felt like reasonably "good people."
Surely their friends and relatives who came to
Jesus thought them deserving of better treatment at the hands of God than they got! But
they, like so many millions today, didn't understand that it was MAN who first
invited God to get out of His world! It was MAN who said, "Don't let God
speak with us!" It was MAN who said, "Make us a king like the other
nations." It was MAN who cut himself off from God by his own societies, his
own governments and socioeconomic systems, and his own free religions! It was man, through
exercising his own free choice, who pulled the plug and separated himself from
God so that he became without God in the world."
God simply was NOWHERE AROUND when
these tragedies struck. And, in that lonely, isolated car in that black Alaskan snowstorm,
when those two terribly stricken parents tried to revive their little twin boys are in the
millions of huts and hovels from Bangladesh to the Sub Sahara, from China to Brazil, where
hundreds of thousands of little babies were likewise dying, though from slow starvation or
the ravages of disease, and in all the trenches, foxholes, tanks, ships and aircraft of
all our wars, as young men have been killed by the millionsGod simply was not a part
of it. He wasn't in it, not involved. It wasn't "His war"; it wasn't "His
society."
God doesn't bother with your life unless YOU
ASK HIM TO IN ADVANCE!
Jesus said, "Except YE REPENT" you
shall all "likewise" (though sheer time, and chance, and circumstance) perish!
It is only when we finally realize that we need
God all the timewhen we know we must repent of our sins and call out to God
in repentance, calling upon the saving grace of the shed blood of Jesus Christ to cleanse
us of our carnality, when we are baptized (Romans 6), and when we OBEY the
command of God to "REPENT, and be baptized every one of you for the
remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts
2:38)that God says He is willing to make Himself a PART of our everyday
lives!
God does not deal in preventive legislation. He
does not PREVENT man's wars, or our bad diets, or religious taboos and
superstitions. He does not prevent us from manufacturing deficient automobiles that can
kill us in bizarre circumstances. He does not PREVENT us from forgetting to leave
windows open, if we are in an enclosed place, or shutting the engine off. He does not PREVENT
ancient mortar from weathering, or brutal soldiers from killing.
But God promises to be a daily PART of
our lives if we establish that connection! If we approach HIM. If we seek Him!
God says, "I have spread out my hands all
the day unto a rebellious people which walk in a way that is not good, after their own
thoughts. A people that provoke me to anger continually to my face ... that say, 'Stand
over there by yourself' to me and, 'Come not near me"' (Isaiah 65:105 paraphrased).
He says, "Seek ye the Eternal while he may
be found, call ye upon him while he is near: let the wicked forsake HIS WAY, and the
unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Eternal, and he will have mercy
upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon!" (Isaiah 55:6,7).
Those poor parents weren't being punished. They
weren't sinners above all else; they were good people, according to our own concepts of
goodness. But God was not involved in their terrible loss any more than He was involved in
the mass deaths during Jesus' day, or in the wars and sufferings of man from the first murder
until now.
YOU can have God's tender mercies; YOU
can have His DAILY intervention in your life; you can have the very mind and
presence of Jesus Christ living His life over again within you, if you will do what Jesus
asks!
"REPENT," He says, "COME UNTO
ME," and says His yoke is easy and His burden light! He says He will draw all men
unto Him and that He is "not willing that any should perish but that all should have
eternal life!"
And those parents? Their dead twin boys?
Probably they do not yet realize that in a very short time now those little boys will be RESURRECTED
TO LIFE againand, hopefully, their own parents by that time may well be in
Christ's OWN KINGDOM!
Spiritual beings, as loving parents, can take
care of children MUCH more effectively than fleshly ones! God intends a happy ending,
finally, even for the terribly stricken family who cried out, "O GOD, WHERE WERE YOU
WHEN I NEEDED YOU?"
YOUR life can have a happy ending, from now on,
if you are willing to discover the REAL Jesus Christ, willing to find out what is sin and
to REPENT of sin, calling out to God to forgive you and to wash away your sins under the
shed blood of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Then you will always know your God is
near; you will know you need Him all the time, every day! He has already made it plain He
wants You in His Kingdom, or you wouldn't be on this earth in the first place!
It is you choiceyour decision.
-End-
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This publication is intended to be used as a personal study tool. Please know it is not wise to take any man's word for anything, including ours, so prove all things for yourself from the pages of your own Bible. Because your salvation is between you and God, it is through such personal verification that you will gain confidence and come to know for yourself what is truth.
For additional related knowledge and understanding,
may we suggest the following title:
The Real Jesus
The Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association
P.O. Box 747
Flint, TX 75762
Phone: (903) 561-7070 Fax: (903) 561-4141