Why Does God Allow Suffering? Part 3
Wouldn’t it be amazing to know the future? We could sell and buy stocks at just the right time and become rich because of our “insider information.” We would know the people to avoid in marriage because we’d know if they’d be prosperous or a moocher. We would know not to get on that train, that cruise ship, or that car because it would lead our life to destruction and death.
We could easily make decisions in our life because we would pick the best ones for our future. Ones that would give us our best life and that of happiness.
But what if I told you there is someone that has been trying to tell you about your future? Someone that has been trying to get your attention and show you that there is danger coming. A life of torment and anguish if not confronted and steered away from.
A forever home that, once brought there, everyone wants to escape from and is far worse than any hell on earth. It is somewhere we can never leave once we die. At death, our choice is made; the direction for our future is set in stone.
That person is God.
As we mentioned in the first post of this series, God’s Character, God is all-knowing. God knows our hearts, He knows our life and He knows our future. He even knows where and when our future will end.
He knows when we will die and where we will go after death.
And He’s been trying to tell you! He’s been trying to get your full attention on such an important topic. The greatest decision you could ever make in life is the most neglected one on earth.
But He left us an account to help us understand. An account of how the world came to be, what it was supposed to be like, and how it all came to an end full of consequences and potential tragedy or redemption. The account He gave us is in the Bible. And the second blog post of this series, Sin Changed Everything, shows how our world became the way it is today from the perfect world it once was.
Throughout this 3 post series, Why Does God Allow Suffering, we have answered many questions. But the most important question, that everyone loves to ignore and not think about, must also be answered.
What happens to us after we die?
Part of the reason God allows suffering is that God punishes the wicked after death (Isaiah 3:11, Jeremiah 17:9-10, Psalm 145:20). This is the time when He bestows His harshest punishment on those who have done horribly wicked acts. To some that would be a sigh of relief. Finally, your molester is getting what they deserve. Finally, your abuser is now the one that is afraid. Finally, you will have the vengeance you desire and they deserve.
But don’t be fooled. Do you know your own future? Your future is more important than anyone else’s.
Throughout this series, I have spoken about God and the world in terms of the oppressed and the victim. And in our human terms and minds, they are very different things. But in God’s sight, there are only two categories of people:
The lost and the saved.
Once we die, whether we were the victim or the oppressor does not matter. Our actions on earth do not help nor hinder our final destination. There is only one thing that changes our destiny. Has our hearts been repentant of the evil that we do and has our sinful soul been purified from the stain of sin through acceptance of Jesus Christ?
The only thing that can give us a better life after death is our belief and faith in God and His given Savior, Jesus. Without that, all people are the same. Born in sin, separated from God, and looking towards a future without Him in torment.
Are you saved or are you lost?
Do not think of yourself as an abuser or a victim. Think of yourself the way God thinks of you. Are you saved or are you lost? If you can honestly ask and answer this question to yourself then you can think about what needs to happen to have the best future. God tells the lost and the saved what their future will be like. It is not a secret. And we are the one that gets to choose what we want to do. But what we want to do and what we decide to do also determines where we will go after death.
God knows the future (Isaiah 46:9-10). And He wants you to have joy and peace after death. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done. He doesn’t want anyone to suffer (2 Peter 3:9, Matthew 18:14). He is begging you to come to Him so that He might give you the greatest future for your eternity.
God’s Two Categories Of People
We are always giving names and identifying those in our life with a certain group of people. We have vegans, atheists, conservatives, Swedish, jocks, hippies, Asians, Environmentalists, alcoholics, parents, the homeless, and on and on and on. The list of different identities people could have is endless.
But God doesn’t care how we identify ourselves as. He is not part of a certain group or organization. He is His own and He treats the world the same. We are either His or we are not. We are either part of His family or we are a slave to our sin. Those are the only two identities that He sees: the lost and the saved.
Who are the lost?
It might seem like a complicated question but it is actually very easy to answer. The lost are people with sin in their hearts and the Bible says we are all born with sin (Psalm 51:5; 58:3). So really that means everyone born on earth is lost because everyone born is a sinner. If we say that we have no sin then we are deceiving ourselves (I John 1:8). We are all lost.
So we get it, every human on earth is lost. But lost from what? What are we missing?
Well, let’s think about this. As an example, a lost child is missing from their parents. They have a place where they should have been with a person that loves and knows them and takes care of them. But they are now separated. The child does not know how to get back to their parent. The child cannot do anything in their own power to get their parents back. They must ask for help or wait to be found.
We are like this child. God created our world and our existence (Genesis 1). He loved us and knew us and took care of us. But we disobeyed and got distracted by other things that we desired which resulted in us sinning against Him.
We are lost in this sin. Sin is what we are born with in our hearts but it is also the bad things that we do throughout our life. Our sin caused us to be separated from Him (Isaiah 59:2). It caused us to become lost. Those who have not removed the sin that separates them stay lost until they choose to get rid of it.
And now we don’t know how to get back to Him. There is nothing we can do within ourselves. There is no great work we can accomplish to make Him bring us back to Him (Ephesians 2:8-9). We will never be good enough to become without sin by ourselves (Ecclesiastes 7:20).
We are missing God in our lives. We are missing our creator and feel a void in our soul where He used to dwell. The place where His Holy Spirit longs to be. We have no way to get to God, He had to make a way for us to come to Him.
And He did.
Jesus, His son, became the key to unlock the door to our future with God once more (Luke 19:10). Simply put, the lost are those who do not have Jesus in their hearts and God’s spirit in their soul.
We are all lost but how can we be found?
How can we be saved?
Who are the saved?
The saved are those that were formerly lost but have then become found.
They are those who have looked at their own hearts and lives and have seen the wickedness and selfish sin that lies there (Psalm 32:5). They are no longer in denial that they sin and are a sinner (Proverbs 28:13). It’s almost as if a revelation happens within them that makes their deepest being see more clearly from God’s eyes.
They see the sin and wish it was not there. They repent from it and they want a change, not just in their character but in their soul.
They desire to be good in every possible way and they desire to do what is right. Instead of just living through their lives and making do with the status quo, they want to do better. They want to be better. They want to be like God, not in power and dominance, but character. They want to live according to His standards and morals.
They see the perfection of God and His love that they had never noticed before. They see Him as He once was in the beginning: our Father, our friend, and our mentor.
Life takes on a new meaning. Now there is hope for the future (Romans 5:1-2). Now there is a reason to live. Now there is a mission to fight for (Matthew 28:19-20). And God gives us all of this.
We are saved from a spiritual death, an eternal life without God.
When we go from being lost to being saved our lives completely change. It’s almost as if we’ve become a new person (Ezekiel 18:31-32, 2 Corinthians 5:17). Our old self has died and we have been born again into someone different (Ephesians 2:1-6). Someone with a new meaning and vision for life. Someone in God’s family, adopted as His own sons and daughters (Romans 8:14-15, Galatians 4:6-7, John 1:12-13).
But how do the lost become saved? What happened that made their lives completely change and their vision become God-centered instead of self-centered? The saved found this conversion through Jesus, the source of their salvation.
How Does The Lost Become The Saved?
To go from lost to found, we must have a spiritual awakening. Our spirit is what connects us to God. When we are lost that connection is broken. Our spirit is dead in our sin and we are a slave to it (Ephesians 2:1, John 8:34). Every good work we do is covered in sin and can’t be considered good in God’s eyes because the sin has defiled it (Isaiah 64:6).
We need to be saved from our lost state of mind, body, spirit, and soul. We must be saved from the disconnect from God. We must be reawakened to what really matters in life and the truth of where we come from and what we were made for.
We must be willing to be vulnerable, to be humble, and to be open-minded.
As I said before, the lost must realize they are a sinner. They have sins that they cannot get rid of by themselves. It is a sickening black, blotch upon their being. And it must be washed away. It must be made white as snow and purified (Isaiah 1:18).
We needed a Savior (John 3:16).
And God gave us His only son to be that sacrifice. He sent Jesus, who was God just like Him, to pay the price for sin. The price of which is death.
Jesus was born as a baby, just like everyone else in the world. He grew up with the same stresses and emotions and hardships that we all go through in puberty and adulthood. But He was the only human that was perfect in moral character. And the only reason He could do this was that, even though he was a human, he was still God.
God can do no evil, so neither can Jesus. He cannot be tricked or manipulated because he knows the hearts and intentions. He still knows the future, even as a man, and he knew what he must do.
While on earth, he preached about God. He answered questions that people always had easily and understandably. He healed the sick, performed miracles, and brought many to God.
But His meaning to be on earth was for a deeper reason
He came to give up his life. To be the sacrifice for our sin, to have his blood be lost from his body. To pay the death that was necessary to rid us of sin so that we didn’t have to. And He did die (Romans 5:6-8). He died by crucifixion during the Roman Empire. It was a painful, agonizing death. But He did it. He accomplished our way to salvation.
To be saved and not lost all we have to do is:
- Realize we are sinners.
- Realize that we need God.
- Know we cannot come to Him by ourselves.
- Accept and believe in Jesus’ death and sacrifice for our sin and ask Him to wash away the sin that we have in ourselves.
- To ask God to have us be a part of His family again.
And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men[a] by which we must be saved.
ACts 4:12
This is all that is required to go from lost to saved. If you do this then you have found the way to a new life. A life that is full of spiritual peace and love.
Once we have a new life there are other things that God asks of us such as baptism and telling others of Jesus, but that is not required for salvation. Those are topics for another blog post.
Life After Death
Now that we have a better understanding of how God views each of us and the category of people that we fall into, we can more easily acknowledge the future He promises us.
He makes it clear throughout the Bible that there are only two places people go after death: a place for the lost and a place for the saved. And the moment we breathe our last breath, we wake up in that place.
No matter the choice we make or the future we have been told of, we must understand that God is honest and He is loving. He tells us how it is without sugar-coating it or being dramatic. He gives us this insight out of love to help us better understand the future we are choosing. It is not God condemning us and it is not given so we can become complacent in our saved lives because we feel safe (John 3:17).
It is God’s warning. It is His plea to pick Him and a life of joy. Everyone has the option to come to Him. If we don’t choose it. Then we are choosing the other.
Pick your choice wisely. Don’t live with any regrets. We live on earth but for a moment. Our life after death is eternal.
“And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Matthew 25:46
The Destination for the Saved
People who have found freedom from their sin and accepted Jesus as their Savior go to a place called Heaven. It is the place where God and Jesus abide.
It is unlike anything we have ever seen or heard of. God says we cannot even imagine its likeness. It is seen as a paradise. (I Corinthians 2:9, Luke 23:43)
Heaven has some similar features to that of earth. For starters, there are mansions in heaven. Massive homes that are full of tons of rooms. Some of the most beautiful mansions we could ever lay our eyes upon. They will be made perfectly and with precious gems. Jesus tells us that he is going to prepare a room just for us (John 14:2-3, 2 Corinthians 5:1). And within this room, we will have an inheritance (I Peter 1:4) If saved we will enjoy an eternity with our own personal space full of things given to us by our Heavenly Father. I don’t know if there is sleeping in heaven, but as a mom of three little ones, my own place to be alone sounds lovely.
Heaven is also a city (Hebrews 11:16). It is a city full of all the people throughout history who have loved God. People from every gender, ethnicity, age, nationality, era, and background. It is also full of the inhabitants that God had created such as the angels and odd-looking creatures (Revelation 4:6-8). It is ruled by God, the mayor and judge of the city (Hebrews 12:22-23). It will be the utopia every civilization has tried to create and failed. A utopia needs a perfect leader and perfect people to work. Only God can create a true utopia.
It is a place of worship (Revelation 7:9-10). All day we will worship the God that created us and praise His holy name. He has the ark of the covenant and a temple set up where He will sit on the throne and we will worship Him day and night. After thousands of years without Him, we will finally see the face of God. (Matthew 18:10) He will look at us with love in His eyes and we will be safe in His protection. There will be genuine joy and happiness. (Revelation 7:15-17, Revelation 11:19)
This might seem boring to some and not desirous to others, but our mindset will be completely different in Heaven than it is here. On earth, we have so much to distract us from God: hunger, our jobs, our families, our pets, our physical needs, our stresses, entertainment, community service, etc… In heaven, we will have none of these. We will be free from pain, free from family ties, free from any form of work or service and there will be no books, movies, or arts. Our focus will shift to spiritual things and not physical ones.
In heaven, Jesus will finally be seen as he truly is, as God. He will no longer be the man on earth, full of weakness and frailty as we are. He will have power and armies and everyone will know just by looking at him that he is Lord. (Philippians 2:9-11)
It is here that the saved wait until the final judgment.
The Destination for the Lost
People still enslaved and stained with their sin, Jesus not accepted into their lives, will have a very different future. They have rejected the only way to get back to God and now they are destined to be without Him forever.
They cannot go to heaven because sin and God can never be together. And if God is in heaven then sin cannot go there, including those with it. They must go to the place that God never intended for mankind to go. He created it for Satan and his demons, the creators of evil and sin. But sin must be punished.
The place of eternal punishment for sin is called hell (Proverbs 15:24, Psalm 9:17). Hell is the place full of nations that forgot God, the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice witchcraft, the idolaters, the liars, the covetous, the envious, the lazy, the gluttons, the selfish and abusive. Every sin you could ever imagine in many different backgrounds of people will be brought here.
A place where there is nothing but darkness. A darkness that is so deep you will be left with the feeling of being horribly alone and in torment. More greatly you will feel the burning fire surrounding you. A fire that will never run out or lessen its heat. (2 Peter 2:4, Matthew 8:12)
There will be a heart-wrenching wailing and gnashing of teeth from every person that enters hell. Have you ever heard a person that was in immense pain? Their screams are a thing of nightmares. A person with an entire body of pain often bites through their tongue because they are so focused on that pain they don’t even notice the pain in their mouth. They are gritting their teeth so hard and yet it doesn’t help them find relief. (Matthew 13:42, 50)
No one cares about you here. There is no one to save you from the ashes. There is no stopping the agony. This is now your eternity. This is what a life without God is truly like.
Although God cannot be with sin, in hell, we are still able to see God there. We are not completely separated from Him yet but we cannot turn to Him now. We are simply reminded of the mistake we made and our reasons for keeping the sin in our life will seem pathetic.
God says that it would be better to chop off your hand or poke out your eye that causes you to sin than to do that sin and go to hell. Imagine. It is better to be maimed while on earth so that you might escape this destiny. (Mark 9:43-48, Matthew 5:29) That is how seriously we need to treat our sins. It can cause us an eternity of punishment, so is it really worth it?
There is actually a personal account of a person that went to hell written in the Bible. To know the story of what happened to a man that was rich and had a good life on earth, yet went to hell because of his sin read Luke 16:19-31.
The Final Judgement
The Great White Throne Judgement (Revelation 20:11-15)
During the last days of the earth, many different events happen. I do not want to go into detail about those in this post. Instead, we will see that there is a specific time when everyone left on earth will visit God’s throne for the final judgment of all the world.
Everyone will be gathered. Those who are in hell, heaven, and left on earth. We will all be in front of God and there will be no secrets left, no deeds unnoticed, and no more places to hide. God will not only bring our spirits and souls to the judgment seat but He will also raise our physical bodies out of the grave and we will become one again.
It is here that we will not only have our final destination determined, but it is also where our deeds on earth are judged. God will open books that have everything that happened on earth during everyone’s lifetime written down. He will judge us fairly according to EVERYTHING that we did. Then He will look in a book called the book of life. This book has every name of the people that were saved while alive. This book will determine our future. The other books will determine our degree of punishment or blessing.
(Matthew 16:27, John 5:28-29, Matthew 12:36-37, Hebrews 9:27)
The Final Destination for the Lost
During this time God throws death and hell into the lake of fire, full of fire and brimstone. This is the second and last death. No more will man die. We will now live forever. No more will hell exist. The place of torment for the lost is now tossed into eternal fire, the eternal punishment. A place far worse than hell.
Those who were not found in the book of life are thrown into the lake of fire as well. As are Satan and his demons. It is here that our deeds on earth affect our torturous future. The worse and more abundant the sins, the hotter the flames.
This is the last and final time we will ever see God’s face again. Once in the lake of fire we are forgotten and separated from Him forever.
(Revelation 21:8, 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9, )
The Final Destination for the Saved (Revelation 21-22)
The life of the saved couldn’t be more different. At this point, God has destroyed the old and fallen earth and removed the old heaven. It is now time for Him to create a new heaven and earth for us to dwell in, a place where there is no more sea. It is far more beautiful than the originals and can never be tainted with evil. There will be no more curse of sin.
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
Revelation 21:4
It is here that God will dwell with us forever. His light will shine so bright that we do not need the sun, stars, or moon. There will be no lights in the city. It will be a place where there is no longer night.
We will also have a temple, cities, and mansions here as we did in the first heaven but they will be even granded. There will be streets of gold, pearly gates that will never shut, and buildings as clear as crystal. There will be all sorts of precious stones such as jade, jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth, and amethyst. There will be a wall, great and high, with 12 gates to come in and out of the city. There will also be twelve fountains of water.
Out of God’s throne, there will flow a pure river of water, that will go to the tree of life. It will yield a different fruit every month and its leaves will heal the nations.
We will spend the rest of eternity with God and the beautiful creation He has made for us. A place of forever rest and glory, a perfect world with a perfect leader.
Knowing The Truth
You might be wondering why I felt it important to say so much in one post. I believe that to make the right choice we must understand the entire picture. If we only know one part we will not make the best decision for our life. We must comprehend and know it in its entirety to fully embrace the choice we wish to choose.
So now that you know the truth, what will be your destiny?
Do you know which category of people you are? If so, then do you know your final destination in your current state of being?
If you are lost please understand the gravity of that sin in your heart. Is it worth the price you must pay for eternity? Matthew 10:28 says, “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” God is to be feared more then your past, more than your abuser, and more than your plans being changed. It is He that has the final say.
And if you are saved are you telling the lost? Are you doing everything in your power to keep them from going there? If you know about these two places than why do you not proclaim it from the rooftops? Why are you ok with hiding your knowledge of the future where no one can see it? Are you just glad that your future is bright and do not care about God’s great commission?
Our future is our own choice and responsibility. We cannot force someone to accept God and we cannot keep someone from sinning. That is our own choice. But be wary of what that choice means.
So let me ask the question, do you know your future? Because God does.
