I remember once visiting with an elderly woman who had been a Christian all her life. As we talked, she asked me how I felt when people ridiculed me for my faith. Apparently that had been something she had struggled with a lot in her life. I asked her what kinds of things people had said to her that bothered her. She replied, “When they ask me difficult questions like, ‘Why God doesn’t do something to stop suffering in the world?’”
I responded by saying, “One reason is because when God created us, He gave us a free will. And because people have chosen to use that free will in wrong and hurtful ways is why we have all the suffering in the world. And,” I also said, “most often He does not interfere with that free will. He lets it play itself out.”
“Now, people often make the fatal mistake that just because God is not doing anything now to correct suffering and deal with evil, they assume that He never will,” I assured her. “And that is simply not true. The Bible reveals over and over again that there is coming a day when all suffering will cease and all evil will be banished. There is a future day of judgment when all the wrongs will be righted.”
In his book, “Hitler’s Cross”, Erwin Lutzer tells how while in Berlin, Germany some time ago, he made a visit to a holocaust museum. He was standing looking at a display of pictures of Jews being hauled off to concentration camps under the Nazi regime, during the days of World War Two. He noticed a Jewish man standing nearby and he asked him what his thoughts were about the display.
The man replied, “It’s because of this (he pointed at the pictures), that I am an atheist.” Lutzer responded, “So you are saying that Hitler gets away with all he did.” The man looked startled and asked why Lutzer would say such a thing. Lutzer went on to explain that if there indeed is a God, and if what He has said in the Bible is true, then one day, there will be a great Final Judgment of all people. It will be at that same Final Judgment that Hitler himself will have to stand and give an account to God, the just Judge, for all of his atrocities.
But if there is no God, then there is also no Final Judgement, and if there is no Final Judgement, then Hitler gets away, unpunished. He ends hurting millions of people, dies at his own hand and never gets to see any justice brought on his head. If there is no God.
But you see, because there is a God who has promised a final day of reckoning, he won’t get away with it.
No one does.
