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Why does God let innocent people suffer?

This is the most frequently asked question concerning God. If God is loving, why do evil people flourish and innocent people perish? Why does God not step in to help, deliver, and save? Millions of people died in World War II. Many innocent people are still dying all around the world today in war and in peace. Babies are born impaired. Children become crippled. Adults become paralyzed. Old people become invalids. There is senseless killing, lying, cheating, stealing, and robbing between and within nations and ethnic groups, in "bad neighborhoods" and "good neighborhoods," and in families. Who are the victims? Mostly the innocent--the children, the aged, and the nice people. Where is God? Is He not a loving God? Did He not create man? Why does He not help? Why does He let it happen? Isn't He in control? We need to go back to the beginning to see why things are the way they are and if there is a solution to this problem that all humanity faces.

The Battle of Two Kingdoms
The Bible tells us that before man was created, Lucifer, the archangel who was the ruler over the earth, had rebelled against God and become God's enemy, Satan. The earth had become the kingdom of Satan. Then there was a struggle between the two kingdoms--God's and Satan's.

Man is to Express God and Rule for God
Man was made by God in His image to express God and rule for God. To express God is to love as God loves, be righteous as God is righteous, and so on. God has many divine attributes, and man was created with the corresponding human virtues. Man is supposed to live a life that expresses God's divine attributes through his human virtues. To rule for God is to be God's deputy authority, king of the earth, to overthrow and replace Satan and to bring in God's kingdom of love and righteousness.

Man was created perfectly. He would not get sick or die. God provided everything that man would need to live, to express God, and to rule for God. For man's physical existence, God gave man air, water, food, and sunshine. To make the environment pleasant for man, God made trees, flowers, and grass. To make the earth a lively place, God made the animals. For man to fulfill his function--expressing God and ruling for God--God made a spirit within man and set man before the tree of life. The tree of life signifies God becoming life to man. If man would take God into his spirit by eating the tree of life, man would have God as life and be able to express God and to rule for God.

The Greatest Tragedy of the Universe
Although God's intention would have been fulfilled if man ate from the tree of life, God still allowed man to choose between Him and Satan--signified by the tree of knowledge. Satan came in disguise, in trickery, and deceived man by making the tree of knowledge seem very pleasant. Man chose the tree of knowledge. Instead of God's life, man received the satanic life into himself, resulting in sin, evil, and death.

The satanic life has been growing in man for the last six thousand years. Because man took in Satan's life, man is under the control of the satanic nature inwardly as well as the authority of Satan outwardly. The Bible calls Satan "the god of this age." Man is blinded by him. Man is lying in the hand of this evil one and is unconscious of what the evil one is doing to and in him. Satan's desire is to ruin and kill man. The real and living God created man, but the god of this age got into man. The universal tragedy is that the very man who was to be king living in God's kingdom has become a slave dying in Satan's kingdom. Satan is destroying the man God created, so that the condition today is not God's original intention.

God's Way of Saving Man from Suffering
God loved man and still wanted to save man from suffering back to Himself. However, even He had to acknowledge the authority which had been set up. It would have been unrighteous for God to remove this deputy authority without the proper procedure. Also, without the preparation of a proper replacement, there would be a big chaos. With this in view, He took some definite steps to bring about the defeat of Satan and to bring in His own kingdom. First, He came to earth as a man named Jesus Christ 2000 years ago. He as a man set up a pattern for us, showing us how man may love one another and be righteous by God's life. Although He acknowledged the authority of Satan over the earth and was subject to his ruling outwardly, He did not succumb to Satan's temptations. He was the one-man kingdom of God. Satan had nothing in Him. Jesus did not have the satanic nature; therefore He was inwardly free from the tyranny of Satan. Yet He did not as a single man take back the earth. This job requires many of us to join Him.

For this He died to pay a ransom for all mankind in order to redeem them from God's righteous judgment of sin and resurrected to be man's life. Now the way has been reopened for man to take God in as life and express and rule for God, to become just like Him and together to defeat His enemy and bring in His kingdom.
All this happened two thousand years ago, yet most people have not heard about or received this good news. The world is still in chaos because so many are under Satan's deception and control to resist God and live by the sinful nature.

The Way to Stop All Suffering
If you want to get out of this chaos, and save the world from Satan's kingdom, you need to save yourself first by receiving God into you through calling on His name. Then He will start the process of salvation inside of you. At the same time, you need to spread the good news abroad to your acquaintances. When enough people on earth are filled up with the God of love and righteousness, the kingdom of God will be brought in. People will be living in peace, loving one another. There will be no more robbing nor senseless killing. All forms of evil will be removed from the earth. Would you like to see this in your lifetime? What should you do?
You may turn from Satan's kingdom of darkness to God's kingdom of light, from Satan's authority of death to God's authority of life. Say to God, "Lord Jesus, come into me. Deliver me from Satan's kingdom into Your kingdom. Forgive me of all that I did under the tyranny of Satan. Save me now." You will become a part of what God is doing in man to end all the suffering in the world and to bring His kingdom to the earth.

Bible Verses for Your Reading
Luke 4:6 And the devil said to Him, To You I will give all this authority and their glory, because to me it has been delivered.
Isaiah 14:12-15 O Lucifer...! ...For thou hast said in thine heart ...I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell.
Colossians 1:13 Who delivered us out of the authority of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.
Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, ...let them have dominion.
Matthew 5:48 You therefore shall be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Matthew 22:39 Love your neighbor as yourself.
2 Corinthians 5:21 That we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Genesis 2:9 Out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree...; the tree of life..., and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Zechariah 12:1 The LORD... forms the spirit of man within him.
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtle.... And he said unto the woman.
2 Corinthians 11:3 The serpent deceived Eve.
Romans 5:12 Therefore just as through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin, death.
Ephesians 4:17-19 The Gentiles also walk in the vanity of their mind, ...alienated from the life of God..., because of the hardness of their heart; Who... have given themselves over to lasciviousness to work all uncleanness in greediness.
Romans 7:23 But I see a different law in my members, ...making me a captive to the law of sin.
2 Corinthians 4:4 In whom the god of this age has blinded the thoughts of the unbelievers that the illumination of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, might not shine on them.
1 John 5:19 We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the evil one.
Hebrews 2:14-15 Through death He might destroy him who has the might of death, that is, the devil, and might release those... held in slavery.
Romans 5:8 But God commends His own love to us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
John 1:1, 14 In the beginning was the Word..., and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh.
Matthew 1:21 You shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins.
John 6:57 I live because of the Father.
1 John 4:7 Love is of God, and everyone who loves has been begotten of God and knows God.
Matthew 4:9-10 And he said to Him, All these will I give You if You will fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, Go away, Satan!
John 14:30 The ruler of the world is coming, and in Me he has nothing.
1 Peter 3:18 For Christ also has suffered once for sins, the Righteous on behalf of the unrighteous, that He might bring you to God.
1 Peter 1:3 God... has regenerated us unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:45 The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.
Hebrews 10:20 Which entrance He initiated for us as a new and living way through the veil.
1 John 5:11 God gave to us eternal life... in His Son.
Galatians 2:20 It is Christ who lives in me.
Revelation 20:6 They will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years.
Revelation 11:15 The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ
Acts 2:40 Be saved from this crooked generation.
Acts 2:21 And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Mark 5:19 Go... to your own people, and report to them... how He has had mercy on you.
2 Peter 3:13 We are expecting new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.
Revelation 21:3-4 God Himself will be with them and be their God. ...Death will be no more, nor will there be sorrow or crying or pain anymore.
Acts 26:18 To turn them from darkness to light and from the authority of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance.

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