Let's say I take my mothers favorite crystal decanter to the top of a building and through it off the roof. Are you saying that I could go home and tell my mother that I actually didn't cause the decanter to break, the concrete sidewalk it fell on caused it to break?
I engineered the taking of the decanter, I set in motion it's flight by throwing it off the roof, yet somehow I can get away with saying I did not "cause" the decanter to break? God engineered this situation of the meeting of these girls and their murderer(s), God set in motion the limited number of the girls lives, yet somehow God can get away with not "causing" these murderers?
Do you believe that God did not foreordain these girls fate?
Are you asking me if I believe that God knew these girls would be murdered or do I believe that God engineered the exact events that would lead up to and involve their murder?
Do you believe that events like that can possibly happen if God really, really, really doesn't want them to?
No.
Do you believe that God was powerless to prevent these acts?
No.
Or do you believe that God allowed them to occur, knowing that ultimately it will work to his glory?
What exactly does the phrase “God allowed them to occur” really mean anyway? God turns a blind eye? Like a policeman at a reggae concert who see people smoking dope but doesn't arrest them? Either God engineers every single event or He doesn’t, right?
This is why Charles Spurgeon, the London pastor from 100 years ago said,
I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes – that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens – that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses. The creeping of an aphid over the rosebud is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence – the fall of . . . leaves from a poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche.
So then, did or did not God engineer the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman? And, if He did, and in the end it does indeed serve to glorify Him, God would not only have "allowed" evil to happen and "somehow" been glorified because of it, God in fact would have designed, built and carried out evil for the precise purpose of glorifing Him.
No. Some other free moral agent engineered the murders. If God can bring beauty from these ashes, then that certainly does bring glory to Him. And he will. So He is glorified.
God, however, did not design evil.
Your crystal decanter illustration doesn't work. You have to give the decanter a mind, freedom, a will, and wings so it can prevent hitting the ground if it so chooses. At that point, you just begin to get a proximate parallel to the problem before us.
The murderer has a mind, freedom, a will, and a God-given conscience that influences even him, a non-regenerated person. With such, he is a free moral agent. His decisions are His fault.
And if God allowed it to happen, then he will work the event to his glory somehow, wont't he?
It seems to me that you are either saying yourself that God designed that those girls ought to be killed and that God in essense killed them. No, God allowed the evil that happened to exist. God knew it would happen. He did not interfere with the evil.
If I know that a train is going to arrive at 10:30 tommorrow, am I responsible for the train's on-time arrival? No.
Now if I am drving the train, then I am responsible. The blame for the deaths of those girls is at the feet of the perpetrators. Don't blame God. And Don't blame God for letting it happen either. The fact that it happened means only that God will work the event, eventually, to his glory.
Pony nothing happens on this earth that God is not aware of or that he could prevent or stop.
Did God love Joseph ? He allowed him sold into slavery, He allowed him to be falsly accused of a crime..to be cast into prison
Did God love the apostles that were martyred?
God is sovereign..NOTHING happens without His approval. Before the foundation of the earth God knew. God has the divine ability to alter future events , to save some and not others. God is not helpless nor unengaged in the affairs of man..he knows every hair on my head..
We have had family tragedy , a moment when we could have asked God why..instead we trust Him and His divine purpose..