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| Mental anguish, pain and suffering is the common lot for the majority of mankind |
Tragedy is constantly in the news, including large-scale, ‘senseless’ disasters that snuff out the lives of thousands, such as the terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre. Nor is tragedy confined to today—it was not too long ago that an evil regime wiped out 6 million Jews and many others.
In addition to the headline events, each of us suffers pain at one time or another—illness, headaches, accidents and death. It is not surprising, when the burdens become too great, that people cry out to God in anguish, ‘Why don’t you do anything? Don’t you care?
Death and suffering is everywhere, and as that is the case, then how can how can an all-powerful, loving God allow suffering to continue. The bottom line is that multitudes and have rejected God because of suffering and as a result have more than likely found themselves suffering in eternal damnation at the end of their lives for having done so.
Charles Darwin rejected Christianity after the death of his daughter and then one would suppose came up with his theory of evolution. Famous media mogul Ted Turner lost his faith after his sister died.
After having injured my back as a young man, I have been in constant and regular pain for decades and decades, 38 years to be precise. At the time of the incident, I was working as a labourer in a railway siding loading soft drinks into railway trucks.
When it happened, I knew what the cause of the intense and severe pain to the lower back region was the result of - a slipped disc in the lower vertebrae.
However, that was only the start of my problems as I soon learnt there was not one GP who was willing, or able, to do anything about the predicament that I had found myself in.
After having visited so many over the years to be told all I had was mild arthritis, and that there was nothing at all that could be done. I was left completely despairing and in a state of bewilderment as there was nothing at all that I could think of to relieve the pain.
What that meant was that for decades and decades anytime that I did anything at all that was strenuous or involved the use of my back that result was that I suffered sometimes for days and days until my back started to return to normal.
The bottom line out of all of this is that there was nowhere that I could go to find a cure to this quite intense pain. That was until recently when I was talking over the fence to my next-door neighbour who told me that he also had been suffering with intense pain in the lower back region and that he had gone to a highly recommended chiropractor who had worked a miraculous cure returning his back to normal.
I followed that advice and after only having made one visit to the chiropractor managed to have the disc pushed back into place resulting with a 70% cure. Subsequent visits have only improved the situation further.
As a young man of just 18, I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my saviour and deliverer and then just 4 years later I was inflicted by Satan with what was to become a lifetime of suffering and pain. However there was never ever a time over those forty years of what was at times sheer torment did I ever give up on the Lord, just as the Lord had never ever given up on me.
As that is the case, if there are those out there who may be in the same situation that I was in and are thinking of giving up on the Lord, DON'T DO IT, is my best advice, just hang on in there with the Lord and eventually he will see you through.
Those who put their trust in Christ as Saviour have a wonderful hope—they can spend eternity with the Lord in a place where there will be no more death.
‘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).
Indeed, death is really the path that opens the way to this wonderful place, called Heaven. If we lived forever, we would never have an opportunity to shed this sinful state.
However, God wants us to have a new body, and He wants us to dwell with Him forever.
In fact, the Bible states that ‘precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints’ (Psalm 116:15). Death is ‘precious’ because sinners who have trusted Christ will enter into the presence of their Creator, in a place where righteousness dwells.
IT IS SATAN, NOT GOD, WHO INFLICTS PAIN AND SUFFERING ON THE CHRISTIAN, AND THE NONE CHRISTIAN ALIKE, SO THAT HE MAY DRIVE THE SUFFERER INTO ETERNAL DAMNATION. DO NOT LET HIM DO THAT TO YOU.
WHY I AM NOT A DISPENSATIONALIST; John Nelson Darby is recognized as the father of dispensationalism later made popular in the United States by Cyrus Scofield's Scofield Reference Bible. Charles Henry Mackintosh, 1820–1896, with his popular style spread Darby's teachings to humbler elements in society and may be regarded as the journalist of the Brethren Movement. CHM popularised Darby more than any other Brethren author. As there was no Christian teaching of a “rapture” before Darby began preaching about it in the 1830s, he is sometimes credited with originating the "secret rapture" theory wherein Christ will suddenly remove His bride, the Church, from this world before the judgments of the tribulation. Dispensationalist beliefs about the fate of the Jews and the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel put dispensationalists at the forefront of Christian Zionism, because "God is able to graft them in again," and they believe that in His grace he will do so according to their understanding of Old Testament prophecy. They believe that, while the methodologies of God may change, His purposes to bless Israel will never be forgotten, just as He has shown unmerited favour to the Church, He will do so to a remnant of Israel to fulfill all the promises made to the genetic seed of Abraham. I am not a dispensationalist; it is unbiblical.
