The Mystery of God Finished

Suppose an evil man plans to abduct, abuse, and murder a child. Each day he hides in a clump of trees by a playground in a park. He waits and watches for an opportunity to carry out his plan. One day his opportunity comes. A young mother and her four year old daughter are at the playground and no one else is around. The mother returns to her car for just half a minute to get something. During that half a minute, the man runs out from the trees, grabs the little girl and carries her through the trees to his van in a parking lot behind the trees. He drives to a secluded place, where he abuses and murders the little girl.

Now suppose there was another person who knew all about this evil man’s plans. This person could have done something to prevent this tragedy from happening. He could have warned the mother. Or he could have phoned the police anonymously. Or he could have just gone to the park and sat at the playground so his presence would discourage the evil man from abducting the little girl. There are a number of ways this person could have prevented this tragedy, with no danger to himself. Yet he chose to do nothing. He chose to not get involved. He let it happen.

What would you think about this person? I have asked this question to people, and most people say that this person is a horrible, selfish, uncaring and unloving person.

The above story is not entirely hypothetical. It is a true story. I know the person who let it happen, and most of you reading this probably also know that person. That person who knew about the evil man’s intentions but did nothing to prevent the tragedy from happening is the LORD God, “for the LORD searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts” (1 Chron. 28:9).

God is strong enough and smart enough to do something to prevent tragedies like this from happening, yet He often chooses to not intervene. But we dare not accuse God of being horrible, selfish, uncaring and unloving, because the Scriptures declare that God is love.

Why does a loving, all-knowing and all-powerful God allow horrible things like this to happen? Revelation 10:7 says that when the seventh angel sounds his trumpet, “the mystery of God should be finished.”

What is “the mystery of God”? My Bible’s marginal note calls it God’s “secret plan.” I do not claim to fully understand exactly what “the mystery of God” is. After all, it is a secret, a mystery. However, I believe that part of the mystery of God is the fact that He often allows innocent children and righteous adults to suffer unjustly. The reason why is a mystery.

Every one of you reading this has no doubt experienced some form and some degree of suffering at sometime in your life. Life is filled with suffering. Abandonment, betrayal, cancer, depression, death, sickness, pain, poverty, tooth decay, baldness.... The list goes on and on. Some things are more tragic than others. Whether we suffer a major tragedy like divorce or disease, or a minor tragedy like a flat tire or baldness, the natural response is often “Why me, Lord? Why did You let this happen?”

It is not a sin to wonder why, or even to ask why. Even Yeshua/Jesus cried out “Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” It is not a sin to wonder or to ask, but we must not bear a grudge against God because of any suffering He has allowed. One of the commandments is to not bear a grudge (Lev. 19:18). If it is a sin to bear a grudge against imperfect men, how much greater a sin it is to bear a grudge against God, who is perfect.

One of the pillars of Buddhism is “Life is difficult.” Buddha was no doubt wrong about some things, but he certainly got that right. Life is also filled with various joys and pleasures, but sometimes those joys and pleasures are ruined by tragedy. A happy young bride plans her wedding, but on the wedding date, the groom is killed in a car wreck on his way to the wedding. The bride and her guests cannot enjoy the dinner and the wedding cake.

Why does God allow things like that to happen? I will reply to that question. However, I will not answer the question, because the answer is a secret, and I do not know the secret. The unknown answer is part of the mystery of God.

My reply to the question of suffering is to first of all point out that God is sovereign. That means He does whatever He wishes, and He is not obligated to explain His reasons to us. “But our God is in the heavens: He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased” (Ps. 115:3).

My second reply to the “Why?” question is to point out that people have been trying to answer that question since at least the time of Job, and no one has come up with a satisfactory answer.

“Daniel, I know why God allows suffering. It builds character. And good things sometimes come about as a result of tragedy.”

Yes, God sometimes brings good things out of a tragedy, but that explanation is not an explanation at all. It is just an observation, and nothing more. My response to the trite saying “God builds character and brings good out of tragedy” is to ask the following:

Why doesn’t God build character and bring about the good things without making people suffer? Isn’t an all-knowing, all-powerful, loving God smart enough and strong enough to think of a way to get the results He wants in a way that does not require human suffering?

People want to understand why God lets them suffer. “God, what’s going on? I have a right to know what You are doing and why You are doing it. After all, it’s my life.”

Actually, it is not your life. The Bible says “ye are not your own,” because “ye are bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:19f).

I once read a quote from someone named Bill Johnson. I do not know who the man is. I’m sure there are thousands of men with that name. But this particular Bill Johnson said, “If you want the peace that passes understanding, you have to give up your right to understand.” Actually, you do not really have a right to understand, so I would reword that as “your demand to understand.”

It is a sad fact of life that our loving, all-knowing and all-powerful God allows innocent children and righteous adults to suffer unjustly, and He does not explain the reason why.

Some of you do not like that. I don’t like it either, but where else are we going to go? There is only one true God and one Mediator to connect us to that one true God. As Peter said when Yeshua asked the twelve if they were going to leave Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that Thou art that Messiah, the Son of the living God” (John 6:68f).

We live in a world filled with tragedy and suffering. As a line in an oldies song says, “The world is a sad place, a bad place, a terrible place to live. Oh, but I don’t want to die.” But our life in this world is temporal. We will not live in this sad world forever.

When you are young with your whole life ahead of you, life looks like an endless sea. Your death seems so far beyond the horizon that it seems almost nonexistent. But as a line in another oldies song says, “Time is an ocean, but it ends at the shore. You may not see me tomorrow.” Our existence in this age has boundaries of space and time, from conception in the womb to burial in the tomb. “Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” (James 4:14).

Our brief time in this world is preparation for eternal life in the age to come, just as a baby’s nine short months in the womb is preparation for seventy or eighty years of life outside the womb.

Because I understand that our temporal life in this world is preparation for eternal life in the age to come, and because I know that our temporal life in this world includes some measure of suffering, then I can only conclude that suffering is a necessary part of our preparation for eternal life in the age to come.

This does not answer the question of why suffering is necessary, but it does reveal the purpose of suffering. Its purpose is to prepare us for eternal life in the age to come.

Some suffering is avoidable, but some suffering is unavoidable. The way to handle unavoidable suffering is resignation. Resign yourself to the fact that life is difficult and people are jerks. And especially resign yourself to the fact that God is not going to explain to you why you had to suffer certain things in your life. The reason is part of God’s secret plan, called “the mystery of God” in Revelation 10:7.

Let’s face it, God is a mystery. We see Him only “through a glass, darkly”; we know Him only “in part” (1 Cor. 13:12). The more I learn about God and the longer I know Him, the more I realize how many things there are about God that I do not know. I can rattle off hundreds of things that I know about God. Anyone who has read the Bible several times can do that. But there are far more things about God that I do not know, and will never know on this side of eternity.

In eternity past, before Genesis 1:1, what was God doing? When did God create those four living creatures, mentioned in Revelation chapter 4, with the faces of a lion, a calf, a man, and an eagle, creatures that rest not day nor night but continuously cry out “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come”? Why did God create them? We know He created them for His pleasure, because the four and twenty elders say “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, honour and power: for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.” But why does God get pleasure from hearing those four living creatures continuously crying out day and night “Holy, holy, holy”? How long have they been doing this? And will they do this forever and ever? And who are those four and twenty elders?

We see through a glass darkly and we know God only in part. There are many things that are mysteries and will remain mysteries until God unveils them.

The Bible speaks of “the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 13:11). In the Parable of the Sower, why does God allow the devil to take away the seed sown by the wayside? Why does He allow stones and thorns to be in the field to hinder the seed from growing to maturity? In the Parable of the Tares, why does God allow the enemy to sow tares among the wheat? In the Parable of the Net, why does He allow bad fish to mingle with good fish? We understand how these parables describe the realities of life, but no explanation of “why” is given. Only a statement of “what” is given.

Another mystery mentioned in the Bible is “the mystery of iniquity” (2 Thes. 2:7). Why does God allow lawlessness to continue? No answer is given. It is a mystery. But we can rest in the knowledge that God will one day punish the wicked and reward the righteous, because God is fair. As Abraham said, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen. 18:25).

Life is not fair, but God is fair. He will one day right every wrong and fix every injustice that you suffered. People may get away with murder in this age, but they will not get away with it in the age to come. “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Num. 32:23).

Our suffering in this age somehow affects our glory in the age to come. The Bible says that as children of God, we are joint heirs with Messiah “if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together” (Rom. 8:17).

The very next verse says “for I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18).

Again, there is no explanation of “why,” only a statement of “what.” The “what” is the fact that our sufferings in this age will be followed by glory in the age to come, a glory so glorious that it is not even worthy to be compared to the sufferings of this present age.

How exactly will that work? I do not know, but here is a little parable I came up with that might help. Suppose you have serious financial problems. One day you are sitting at home barefoot, because you cannot afford shoes. Your doorbell rings. You are afraid it might be a bill collector or a bank employee coming to repossess your car. On your way to the door, you step on some Legos with your bare feet and you feel excruciating pain. You open the door and see a well dressed man holding an envelope. Your heart sinks. The worry in your head and the pain in your feet make you miserable. The man tells you that he is an attorney, and that you have inherited two million dollars from a rich uncle whom you barely knew. When the attorney hands you that check, you forget about the pain in your feet. The glory of that unexpected two million dollars is not worthy to be compared to the temporary pain of stepping on Legos with bare feet. In like manner, the glory we will experience in the age to come will make us forget about the suffering we experienced in this age.

Some people suffer tragedies far worse than stepping on a Lego with bare feet. Some years ago a man around 60 years old wandered into our Gates of Eden Outreach Center. As we sat and talked, he told me that he and his wife were going through a very difficult time. Their son had committed suicide. The man did not know how to comfort his wife, nor how to find any comfort for himself. He wanted to know why things like that happen.

What do you say to a person who is going through something that tragic?

I told the man that I do not understand why things like that happen. Then I told him something that I had read about wall tapestries. Weavers can create beautiful, unique wall tapestries on their looms. If you look at the back of a tapestry, it looks like a big mess. It is just a tangle of different colored threads all jumbled together. There is no order or cohesion, only disorder and chaos and confusion. Nothing you see makes any sense. But when you look at the front of the tapestry, you see that the threads are woven together to form a breathtaking picture of a beautiful garden. Each individual thread is in its place for a reason. All the twisted chaos and confusion on the back is necessary to create the glory on the front.

In this age, we are looking at the back of the tapestry. But on the other side, in the age to come, we will see the beautiful garden of Paradise on the front. Just as every thread in a tapestry forms a part of the picture, so every pain we endure in this age has its purpose. It somehow prepares us and shapes us for eternal life in the age to come.

I told the man that this tapestry parable does not really explain “why” suffering is part of life in this world, it only tells us “what” suffering does. It prepares us for the glory that will follow.

“I don’t know if that helps you or not,” I said to the man.

The man assured me that it definitely helped. He said he was going to share it with his wife.

“The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29). The reasons God uses human suffering to bring about His will, when He could do it in a way that does not require human suffering, is one of the secret things that belong to Him. Rather than trying to figure out the unrevealed secret things that belong to the LORD, we should instead focus on those things which are revealed, that we and our children may do all the words of God’s law. Don’t ask “Why?” Instead, ask “What?”

“Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” (Acts 9:6).

The Book of Habakkuk begins by asking “Why?” Habakkuk asks God why He allows violence, iniquity, grievance, spoiling, strife, contention, and injustice. Habakkuk begins his book by asking why God allows such things to continue. He ends his book by resigning himself to the fact that these things exist in this world, and he states that he will rejoice in the LORD anyway, even if things do not go well.

“Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord GOD is my strength, and He will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and He will make me to walk upon my high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments” (Hab. 3:17ff).

If you will do what Habakkuk says, and rejoice in the LORD and joy in the God of your salvation, even when things are not going well, then the LORD will make your feet like hinds’ feet (even if they hurt from stepping on a Lego!), and He will make you to walk upon your high places (where there are no Legos to injure your feet!). So trust the LORD and rejoice.

| DB