War, Disease and Newton: Where Is God, Part II

Is the sky falling? 

I am confident that we now live in the end of days. I've had liberals on twitter mock me with that question about the sky falling. Of course I expect no one on the left to be any serious student of the bible and eschatology (thank you pastor Gary for the big word).  Even a simple one time reading through the bible makes it clear that end time prophecy is lining up.

The world has been in turmoil for quite some time. The memories of World Wars I & II seem to be fading into the mist of time. The Holocaust and the nazi death camps. Stalin's brutal suppression of dissent. Comrade Mao's brutal cultural revolution which was another type of suppression of dissent. Pol Pot's Killing Field's in Cambodia. 

And today the agent of suppression in the world is Islam. The word muslim literally means "one who submits." That is the coming battle - a spiritual battle.

Why does there have to be a battle? Why is there death and disease? Why is there war and violence? Why do Columbine and Aurora, CO happen? And Virginia Tech and Newtown?

Gen 5:1-2 This is the written account of Adam’s family line. When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God.He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.

From Genesis we know that mankind is created in God's image. That doesn't mean that we literally look like God. The bible teaches us that God is spirit and we must worship Him in spirit. What the image of God means is that we have the mental characteristics of God. We have an intellect to imagine and create. We can put our minds to solving medical mysteries. We love. We hate. We are tender, and sometimes we aren't.

Gen 3:22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

What that all comes down to is that we were created with free will. God wants and desires that we choose Him back. If we were coerced to somehow to choose God then it would be meaningless, and we would not be the special creation that God designed us. 

Adam and Eve got mankind banished from paradise and close communion with God.

Gen 3:8(a) Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day...

I use this part of the verse to convey a feeling I've always had about this. Can you not see that this was probably a common occurrence? I picture that this is probably how God often interacted with His creation in the Garden of Eden. It was just after this verse when God finds out about what Eve had done, and then they are both banished from the garden forever.

...And ever since that point in history the earth and mankind have been grinding to the end of times. Consider how just after the banishment the biblical figures lived for long years:

Adam lived 930 years.

Seth lived 912 years.

Enosh lived 905 years.

Kenan lived 910 years.

Mahalalel lived 895 years.

Jared lived 962 years.

Enoch lived 365 years on earth and then God took him up to heaven. Enoch is still alive with God and never tasted the sting of death. Enoch was blessed. But I digress.

Methuselah lived 969 years.

Lamech lived 777 years, what we would consider jackpot.

Noah lived 950 years; he was 600 years old when the flood occurred.

All these men were close to the creation event in time and were long lived. We were meant to live in close communion with God and live long if not for eternity, worshiping Him and giving God glory. It is our free will that leads to evil in this world. That is not on God. God does not create war. Man creates war out of the evil intent of the heart. And due to our banishment from the Garden of Eden we no longer get to live forever. When God banished Adam he said from dust you are, and to dust you shall return. That was a new thing for Adam to have to contend with a physical body that would eventually wear down.

In contending with the physical, comes the desire for resources and power over other people. And also the evil one is in the world with the fallen angels (demons) working their influence on those humans who have become receptive to evil desires. Demons are even put in charge of geographical areas:

Dan 10:13-14 The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia, and came to make you understand what is to happen to your people in the latter days. For the vision is for days yet to come

The prince of the kingdom of Persia is a demon that resisted the angel Gabriel that was dispatched to give Daniel interpretation of his vision. Demons have geographical jurisdiction! And by extrapolation they have spiritual jurisdiction. To promote evil intent in the heart of mankind. Over war, pornography, drug addiction, mental illness, breaking the family apart in society, destroying education and having true history rewritten. Think of how the world is falling apart and you see the finger-print of the evil one and his minions.

And there is evil in the world. There is disease and war and it's going to get worse before it gets better.  If God were to wipe all evil away then we would not have free will. And then we would not be what God created us to be, a special creation that he loved enough to send his son Jesus to the cross to pay the penalty for ALL our sins.