Why does God allow evil?
Today’s theme is very important and serious, and not always easy to understand: Why does God allow evil if He is goodness and love? Why, if God has created everything so excellently, as He said, “very good”, does evil exist in the world? Why doesn’t God straighten it all out? And in general, where does evil come from in man; where does envy, anger, vengefulness, and hatred come from in us? In the third chapter of Genesis we will find something written about this.
We read:
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. (Gen. 3:1-5).
But before we comment on these verses we have to remember the following: In the book of the prophet Ezekiel, chapter 28, the causes of the origin of evil as such are discussed. There it says that before evil infiltrated the earth, the conflict erupted in Heaven. And as is written about this in other books of Holy Scripture, for example, the Book of Revelation, the devil—satan (and “satanos” is translated as “adversary”) was the first to fall from God, and a third of the angels, who were trusting and who did not ye
15 points on Noetic Prayer
1. Prayer is one of the foremost and strongest powers that causes him who prays to be born again, and it grants him bodily and spiritually well-being.
2. Prayer is the eyes and wings of the soul; it gives us the boldness and strength to behold God.
3. My brother, keep praying with your mouth until divine grace enlightens you to pray also with your heart. Then a celebration and festival will take place within you in a wondrous way, and you will no longer pray with your mouth, but with the attention which works in the heart.
4. If you truly desire to expel every anti-Christian thought and to purify your nous, you will achieve this only through prayer, for nothing is able to regulate our thoughts as well as prayer.
5. Be careful, because if you are lazy and inattentive in prayer, you shall not make any progress either in your pursuit of devotion towards the Lord, or in the acquisition of salvation and peace of thoughts.
Learning Gratitude!
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The word “gratitude” and the sense of it run through all the Gospels and all the Epistles. When we think of those who wrote these epistles, and the Saints who after them repeated again and again this cry of gratitude to God, we must give thought to the way in which that is possible.
Every one of the Apostles suffered for the privilege, the grace of proclaiming the Gospel. Saint Paul describes what he had to endure in two passages of his Epistles to the Corinthians. There was not one moment in their lives which was not fraught with danger, and heavy with pain and suffering. And yet, at no moment did they hesitate to sing and proclaim their gratitude to God. Why, how could they?
If we think of ourselves — how often do we complain about our lives! And yet, can they be compared at all with the tragic lives of the Apostles or the first generations of Christians? — and indeed, of those who have been confessors of their faith in our century. Surely not! We accuse God of all that is p
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"Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit"