[chajin]

I've been thinking of late about the 500s. Constantinople, the crown jewel of Christendom, begins the century filled with God's blessings. Then an earthquake hits that flattens much of the city, followed by a year without sunlight causing a famine leading many to starve, followed by the first incursion of bubonic plague with a death toll as high as that of the Black Death eight centuries later, followed by the invasion of the Slavs.

If you were to somehow have survived the earthquake, the famine, the plague, and the invasion, you would be firmly convinced that God had abandoned you...

Except for two things. First, all those Christians who died had lost nothing: to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

Second, God knew something that you didn't: a child was about to be born who would raise himself up as a prophet--except he was an anti-prophet of an anti-religion worshipping an anti-god, a messenger of Satan who wanted to see the world forced into submission (islam) to his anti-gospel. And to protect His church in Europe, God was bringing in barbarians, entering the vacuum left by the collapse of the Roman Empire, leading them to Christ, who would save them and turn them into warrior knights for God, rather than warriors for pagan idols. Rome and the west already had them, but Constantinople and the east needed the barbarians as well, and the barbarians needed Christ.

"And we know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to his purpose, are called to be saints." (Romans 8:28 DRV). We do not know what our suffering will lead to; we may not know until we are present with the Lord. But He knows.

[Sans-Culotte]

I've been thinking of late about the 500s. Constantinople, the crown jewel of Christendom, begins the century filled with God's blessings. Then an earthquake hits that flattens much of the city, followed by a year without sunlight causing a famine leading many to starve, followed by the first incursion of bubonic plague with a death toll as high as that of the Black Death eight centuries later, followed by the invasion of the Slavs.

I have thought of times like that. Look at the period of WW2. We had Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin leading murderous regimes. The Japanese had become members of a Bushido death-cult, and Mao was lurking in the wings in China. An entire race of people was almost wiped out. I would think a Jew who survived the death camps, or a German who survived the rape and pillage of the "liberating" Russians would think it was the end of the world. I am sure many people felt that "God died at Auschwitz".

I don't think God died, but I have to say I don't think God answers prayers. I think He has a plan, and it is what it is. He is in control, and he lets history unfold the way he sees fit. We think that God has withheld His wrath until some future date, but maybe He has poured it out several times in world history.

Where is God in times like these? I would say He is where He has always been, offering salvation to those who believe in Him. But bad things still happen.