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PERSONAL FROM
Why
DoesGod
AllowWars?
ORE
people bave asked
me this question than any other: Why,
if
there be a God, does God allow wars and
all this human suffering and anguish? Why
such terrifying world conditions as we face
now?
People put it to me this way:
If
God is
good, if God is !ove, if God is merciful, he
wouldn't want people to suffer like they do on
this earth, would he? And, if God is Almighty,
if he has all power, he could stop it. He could
prevent it. Then, why doesn't he?
I want to make plain to you what you may never
have beard or thought of before.
The God I believe in- the God tbat I know
exists, because 1 can prove it!- is the God who
created aH things. He is the Creator not only of
matter, but also of force, of energy, of all the laws
that exist: the laws of chemistry, the laws of
physics-spiritual laws as well as physical laws to
regulate man's life and man's happiness.
God created man in his image, and for a purpose
that almost no one seems to understand. Did you
ever stop to think and wonder why you were born?
What is this purpose that God is working out?
In Genesis 1, beginníng with the 24th verse,
God saíd: "Let the earth bring forth the living
creature after bis -kind...."
February 1986
That is, the little puppy grows up in the image
of its parent dogs, same form, same shape.
And now, the next verse: "And God saíd, Let us
make man in our image, after our likeness...." In
other words, after our form, our shape, our image.
God ís reproducing himself!
God has endowed man with powers that no
animal possesses.
An animal can't design, originate, plan and
execute, using free volition, and then carry out or
execute what it has thought out and designed and
planned. A bird builds a nest. Gophers dig boles
Beavers build dams. But did you ever realize that
one beaver dam is like another? And that they
have been the same from the beginning? Every
bird builds the same kind of nest that its kind of
birds have always built.
We have been given sorne of the powers of God.
Thank God, he limited our powers. Look at how
we've misused what God has given us, and think
what we might have done if God had given us
more power.
The next point that 1 want you to realize is this:
The first chapter of Genesis is telling us only of a
material, a physical creation, not of a spiritual
creation. Man is the clay model. God merely made
the clay model to begin fashioning something
greater that he has in mind.
In Genesis 2:7 we learn out of what God made
man. God is Spirit. But he didn't make man out of
spirit. Rather, "The Lord God formed man of the
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life [the word
breath
comes from the
same Hebrew word that refers to the breatb in the
nostrils of animals]; and man became a living
soul."
It
doesn't say that man has a soul, but man
is
a soul.
We're the clay model. God is the Great Potter.
So we read in Isaiah 64:8: " But now, O Lord, thou
art our father; we are the clay, and thou our
potter; and we all are the work of thy hand."
Not so long ago, I was in one of the great
potteries in England, where very fine bone china is
made. I noticed a potter making vases with his
hands.
1
talked with him for a while.
He said that it took him 30 years to le.trn. how
to do it. He is a master craftsman. The cLt \