How can a good God allow evil? That's one of the questions we often get confronted with. So tonight we wanted to start a new series looking at how to respond to skeptics. Oscar Wilde claimed that suffering proved that a good God does not govern the world. If God cannot stop suffering, then he is not all powerful. If God will not stop suffering, he cannot be good and loving. And the faulty logic and the wrong conclusion evidenced by Oscar Wilde is quite common. You hear this from many people. They're not original when they come out to this sort of thing. Many question God's goodness, power, or even existence because of suffering in the world. So we are starting a new series dealing with answers for skeptics. And really, we should question everything in this world, and we should welcome honest skeptics. The motto of the scouts is, be prepared. How can you be prepared for the unexpected if it's unexpected? But you should be prepared. Similarly, we as Christians must be prepared to answer those who would ask us to explain what we believe and why we believe. We exhorted to contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all delivered to the saints. Notice there's a finality. The faith, the doctrine that we believe has been delivered to the saints. We have it in the Bible. and we need to contend for that faith. Not to reinterpret it, not to reimagine it, not to adjust it like used car salesmen or politicians to be able to fit what people want. We are not the cooks, we are the waiters. We are ambassadors, we're delivering the message. It's the King's message, not our message. The Apostle Paul declared that he had been appointed for the defense of the gospel. But avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they generate strife. We're not talking about getting into some mindless, worthless type of arguments. And the servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient in humility, correcting those who are in opposition. Now, there is a difference between quarrelling and discussing and debating. And quarrelling would be, did not, did, did not, did not to, and so on. Where's that going to get you? Or you're just a mindless imbecile and halfwit and throwing insults back. What's that going to achieve? So there's a big difference between constructive debates and just quarrelling. If God perhaps will grant them repentance so that they may know the truth and not come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will. This reminds us we're involved in a spiritual warfare. And the people that we win on the street or on door to door are normally one on their knees in prayer first. We are commanded to study the Bible to show ourselves approved unto God. Study to show yourself approved unto God. We're commanded to contend for the faith, to patiently teach and correct those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance. Remember, repentance is a gift from God. Faith is a gift from God. That they might come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been captured by him to do his will. Remember, outside of Christ, people are deaf, dumb, blind. dead, actually, in a trespassing sense. We need a spiritual regeneration. We are involved in a world war of worldviews, and the battle for the mind is at the heart of this war. It is a battle for truth. We need to know God's word and we need to know God's work so that we can give carefully reasoned arguments to those who are challenging the Christian faith. Some of these people are honest skeptics who are genuinely looking for answers, and we need to patiently answer them, remembering that we sometimes took many years to come to convictions we now hold. Now, I don't know how many of you have read these books, but Simon Greenfield was one of the top Harvard Law School professors back in the 19th century, he defined what rules of evidence were. He's an unbelieving Jew, and he always said, never make up your mind about a case until you've examined the evidence. And after making some dismissive statement about Christ, one of his brave students said, but sir, have you ever examined evidence for the resurrection of Christ? And Simon Greenleaf steamed within himself at the audacity of this ignorant student daring to question him and throwing his own words back in his face. And so he undertook an exhaustive investigation into the Gospels in order to disprove the resurrection of Christ, which should be easy, right? And Simon Greenleaf ended up being converted to Christ, convinced at the truth of the Gospels and especially the resurrection of Christ. And he stated in his book, after going through it, like a legal investigative journalist, he comes to the conclusion at the end and says, any jury any judge, any court of law anywhere in the world, if presented with the evidence for the reliability of the Gospels and of the Scriptures and of the evidence for the resurrection of Christ, would have to give a declaration in favor of the Gospels, the reliability of the authors. After all, they did die They were willing to die for the message, would you die for a lie? And he went all the way forward saying, there's no doubt the best attested to event in the history of the world has got to be the resurrection of Christ. So that's Simon Greenleaf. He was a total skeptic, unbeliever. Frank Morrison was a journalist, determined, unbelieving journalist, determined to disprove Christianity by hitting at its heart. He investigated the evidence for the resurrection to prove that Jesus never rose from dead. And he ended up being converted. And I've read this book. less than six days, I remember being absolutely decryptus. You can see it starts off maliciously, with hostility, but as Frank Morrison goes deeper and deeper, you can just see things, some doubts entering his mind, and at the end, he converts to Christ, and he says there's no doubt that Jesus moved the stone. No one else could have, and he's risen from the dead. Evidence that Demands a Verdict. Josh McDowell was also challenged by one of his students when he was a lecturer at university to examine the evidence for the resurrection, and Josh McDowell was an unbeliever. And he was so convinced, he wrote the book Evidence that Demands a Verdict, More Evidence that Demands a Verdict, The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict, More Than a Carpenter, and I heard him. every day for a week at lunchtime up at Fitz University in the Great Hall back in 1981, giving the evidence for the reliability of the scriptures and mostly the evidence for the resurrection. Now, this is a man who was skeptic. I mean, these are all skeptics, and I'm not in that category, but I was an unbeliever, and I was raised in an unbelieving home. I never believed anything in the Bible until I was confronted with the gospel at age 17. So there's no doubt there's a lot of people out there who are skeptics. But if you give them some facts and you present the gospel, God may open their eyes and they may be converted. So don't be impatient dealing with people asking honest, skeptical questions. So putting boots on the ground, feet on the street, first big question, how can a good God allow evil? The question of why there is evil in the world was never discussed by the ancient philosophers of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, or Rome, because they were polytheists. They believed in many gods. They had a pantheon of gods, hundreds of gods. Evil is the result of conflicts between the gods. For example, the most famous ancient war in history, the War on Troy, the Siege of Troy. The historical account of the war in Troy was reported by the Greeks in all seriousness as a result of jealousy and rivalry between three rival goddesses, and Athenia and Aphrodite, for example. Now, Aphrodite was the goddess of Troy, and Athenia was, of course, the goddess of Athens, and I forget what the third goddess was. But they picked on some poor shepherd boy, Paris, who, They had choose who was the most beautiful of them, and he chose Aphrodite, who was, in fact, from Troy. And so, out of vindictiveness, they rose up the Greek cities to go and destroy Troy. Now, in all seriousness, this is in the Greek history books for millenniums, as the reason for the most famous war of the ancient world, it was because of rivalry between three goddesses. And you all know about the Trojan horse and so on. That's all part of it. You can't separate all this, although modern Hollywood film Troy did, where they totally left out the spiritual, religious, polytheistic dimension, which is an essential part of the story, actually. However, with the understanding of a holy and loving God, which was a Hebrew concept, revealed through the prophets of Israel, the question of how could there be evil in the world began to be discussed. The book of Job, is the oldest theodicy that we know of. A theodicy is a defense of the justice of God in the light of evil in the world. How can evil and suffering exist when God is all powerful and when God is all good? The friends of Job had a legalistic explanation that the reason Job was suffering so terribly was because he must be guilty of a terrible sin. And God severely rebuked these false counselors, what we today call Job's counselors, Job's comforters. You know, when you have a comforter comes and actually make you more depressed, that's a Job's comforter. And God vindicated Job as a blameless man targeted by Satan. And in Job, you get just the curtain lifted a little bit to get a glimpse into heaven to see, actually, there's a spiritual war going on, which Job was unaware of. For most of the time, he's going through these absolutely hellish attacks, losing his family, his health, and everything. In fact, as some commentators pointed out, Job lost everything except his wife. And the reason for that could be that she is one of the afflictions. And because she, you know, Job, why don't you just curse God and die? She wasn't much of a helpmate either. So poor Job really suffered, but he never got an explanation as to why he was suffering all of these things. But he was a righteous man. And the Bible even says he's a righteous man. God says he's a righteous man. And yet today you'll have people saying Job was evil because he He feared, and God gave him what he feared, and this shows that there was sin in his life. Well, that's just for the prosperity cult, health, wealth, and name it, and claim it, and frame it, crowd, to try and justify their unbiblical theology. But God says Job was a righteous man, and he wasn't suffering because of any evil in his life. He was suffering because of a conflict going on between God and Satan. When the disciples saw a man who was born blind, blind from birth, they asked Jesus, Rabbi, who sinned? this man or his parents, that he was born blind? And Jesus answered, neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. Now that's something that we may not have considered, that sometimes suffering, sickness, can be not due to the fault of the individual, but because God has a bigger plan that we may not be able to understand for many years. Suffering and evil is a result of the fall. Why is there suffering and evil in the world? Because God made a good and a perfect world. Before Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and give in to the temptation of Satan, the world was without pain, without suffering, and without death. Sin and suffering and death is in the world because of sin, because of wickedness, because of a result of mankind's rebellion against the creator. God gave a clear instruction and Adam and Eve violated God's law. All of creation continues to suffer to this day as a result of the sinfulness of human beings. Pain, disease, sorrow, death are the terrible consequences of human wickedness. Now remember from Job and from what Jesus said in John's gospel that the suffering may not be due to the sin of the person concerned, but because of the general sin in society, because of the fall of man. We can also say when people bring up why is there sin and suffering in the world, one of the answers we can give, because of false religions. Most of the suffering in the world today is caused by false religions. Let's just take animism as an example. Now, what you're doing here is a judo throw, because most people when they bring up why is there suffering and evil in the world, they're using it as an attack on the Christian God. And they will support all kinds of false religions. So it's a nice judo throw to take their momentum and to use it to show how much of the suffering in the world is caused by false religion. So witchcraft, or voodooism, animism, has produced terrified, superstitious followers who routinely engage in ritual killing, cannibalism, and cruelty. Witch doctors have routinely blamed individuals for natural disasters, like a bolt of lightning striking a hut, or a death by disease. And with the drums playing, and a witch doctor swaying, and in a trance he'll identify some poor innocent soul as responsible for any given event, which is probably a natural disaster or something like that, that person could then be forced to jump off a high cliff, drink poison, be fed to crocodiles, or clubbed to death. This has happened multiplied tens of thousands of times all over Africa. In many parts of Africa, young girls have been forced to have their front teeth sawn off by the witch doctor, without anesthetic obviously, as part of a purification ceremony. In one area, Venda, that's in the very far northeast of the country, where most of the people are into animism, The most beautiful girl in the district would be sacrificed to the crocodile god in Lake Fonduzzi. I've seen Lake Fonduzzi, although there's a death sentence for any non-vendor to see Lake Fonduzzi. They literally say, you will be killed if you look at Lake Fonduzzi. I've seen it. But they would drag, normally kicking and screaming, the most beautiful girl in the area to be thrown to the crocodile god. And most of them would not think this is a good idea. But their own relatives could be carrying them there. to be married to the crocodile god who seemed to have only one way of dealing with things, and that's with his hulking great big jaws and teeth, and not a great incentive to be beautiful out in Venda. People have frequently sacrificed their last chicken to ancestral spirits instead of providing nourishment to their starving children. There's no doubt animism causes untold suffering. If you doubt this, watch Apocalypto. Mel Gibson's Apocalypto should be required viewing to any of these anthropologists and anthropology students who deify and magnify the pagan religions of the Mayans and Incas and Aztecs and to see what it was like depicted before the gospel arrived or in Papua New Guinea for that matter. Yes, suffering and evil is often the result of animism. Hinduism has produced idolatrous followers, worship 300 million odd gods apparently, who've engaged in infanticide, widow burning, and the burning of lepers. Mishni William Carey documented over 200 years ago how widows as young as 11 years old were burned on the funeral pyre of their husband, burned alive. On one occasion, he documented over 30 widows of one man burned alive because they, polytheists and their polygamists. He had 30 wives, and so when a man died, all of his wives had to be burned on the cremation pyre of their husband, some as young as 11 years old, can you imagine? And then lepers would be burned in order to ensure better reincarnation. And this kind of cruelty was justified by their religion, their idea of reincarnation. Many mothers sacrificed their children by throwing them into the Ganges River to be eaten by crocodiles. Because of Hinduism's belief in reincarnation, rats may not be killed. One of your relatives could be in a rat. It would take a train 5,000 kilometers long. That, by the way, is basically the distance from Cape Town up to Uganda. More than that, actually. If you're going by road, that would be longer. But if you just took straight, straight, not going by road but by plane, you'd get to Egypt. 5,000 kilometer long railway. to haul the grain eaten by rats in India in a single year. Hindu temples contain vast fortunes of gold, rubies, sapphires, and other precious stones in their statues, which are worshipped as idols. Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom give you just some of the ideas, but it's actually Hinduism's reincarnation beliefs, protected rats, Idols made of gold and jewels, wasted resources and superstitions, which cause much of the poverty and starvation in that country. What about Islam? Islam has produced callous males who abuse females, engage in polygamy, slavery, slave raids, kidnapping, terrorism, and suicide bombings, and justified by all kinds of weird concepts of jihad. This is the same woman on the left and on the right after being battered by her husband who was not charged because it was perfectly legal in Saudi Arabia for a man to batter his wife. This in Iran, a woman who reported being raped being hung because under Islam, under Sharia law I should say, under Sharia law, The woman is always to blame. As they say, 90% of the blame goes to the woman because the woman has the power of enticement. Therefore, in a rape case, the woman is executed. The man gets a slap on the wrist, maybe. And so in Iran, hung for the crime of being a victim. Or in Pakistan, buried up to her shoulders and stoned to death. And in Afghanistan, shot in halfway time during a soccer match. Now, I took these three pictures at the bottom. The man on the left in Nuba Mountains had his feet axed off at the ankles because he's an evangelist. This is the west wall of the Fraser Cathedral in Loi, bombed. Pastor Vasco examining the damage, year 2000. And this picture I took of James Crom in Nuba Mountains, he had his left arm cut off by the Arabs. They chopped off his arm because they didn't want him to join the resistance. Why would you want to join a resistance when you've got a government that understanding? Scorched earth, bombed churches, strafed, rocketed, bombed in Paris, in London. Europe is the cancer Islam is on to exterminate those who slander Islam. Massacre those who insult Islam. Europe, you'll pay. Extermination is on its way. Behead those who insult Islam. Gee, isn't it good that they're peaceful and tolerant? I mean, imagine if they were violent. Which of those who mock Islam? Freedom go to hell. Now, that's eloquent. In Egypt, Christian brothers and sisters are attacked. Their churches are burned. Many of our Christian brethren in Egypt have been killed. These are just some of the martyrs who've died at the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Friends in Egypt sent me this postcard. They may destroy our churches, but they cannot destroy our faith. Communism is another religion that's caused untold suffering. In fact, more suffering's been caused by communism than all other causes combined, basically. Just in the last century, communism has produced commissars and comrades who have slaughtered tens of millions of people in the gulags and the killing fields in the name of freedom. Marxists have oppressed and impoverished millions more under their dictatorship's name of liberation. The greatest killer in all of history has been communism. More people have been killed for their faith in Christ in the 20th century than the previous 19th centuries combined. And the biggest mass murderers of them all, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. The Holodomor, Ukraine, burning out whole forests, destroying, wiping out millions of people, 11 million people died in the Holodomor in Ukraine, forced famine. China, 68 million people killed in the name of communism. 40% of the population of Cambodia killed in the killing fields of Cambodia. In Namibia, 10,000 people killed by SWAPO's terrorist campaign, landmines. This is what a landmine does to a Kombi. Imagine what it does to the people. This is what it did to a bucky. Who knows what this was? And there's always innocent victims. ANC Bomb Blast, 1983, Church Street, Pretoria. Kalahari Sands, Vintook Car Bomb, Swapo, actually done by the IRA, but in the name of Swapo. Tenement Square, in Peking, and one brave student standing with just the school books in front of T-68 tanks. This is in Timișoara in Romania, 1989, in memory of the hundreds of Christians murdered in this square as they protested against communism. The Black Book of Communism was produced by six communists. This isn't written by people like me who are lifelong anti-communists. This was written by Stephane Cotter, the editor of Communisme magazine in France. These are all Communist Party members of the Communist Party of France who produced this book. 900 pages, doorstopper, you can drop it in a liberal's foot and he will limp. It's just from their own documentation, their own archives, proving, documenting over 100 million people killed between 1917 and 1991, just in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries, Eastern Europe and so on. 100 million. Now if you add red China to it, adds another 60 something million. Death by government calculates at least 169 million people killed by communism in the 20th century alone. Most of those being, in Russia at least, most of those in Russia being Christians. While they promised them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption. 2 Peter 2.19 can be written across every communist liberation movement. And there's still people who, in the name of revolution, are destroying, looting. Socialism has impoverished countless countries and eroded economies in the name of uplifting the poor. So you see what we're doing. Is it that there's evil in the world? Why does a good God tolerate evil? How is it that there's so much suffering in the world? And what they're trying to do is blame God. What we are doing is we are taking it and blaming their idols, communism, socialism, humanism, interfaith, false religions, all of that sort of thing. Take the starvation of the world. Many people bring up, how can there be a God when people are dying of starvation? Glad you brought that up. The lockdown has led to millions of people starving to death in the guise of fighting a virus. They are stopping people, poor people, who are living on the edge from performing their normal duties, whether it's selling on the side of the road, trying to eke out a living, and whipping and beating while hundreds of millions of tons of food was thrown away because the restaurants and the hotels were closed, and transportation was stopped, and food by the millions of tons was just thrown away. in this last year. And then I want to talk to you about how can God allow people to starve to death. It's the governments who are making people starve to death. It's secular humanism. It's a Wuhan Health Organization, the UN, ZANU-PF, ANC. These are the characters who are starving people to death while they beat the people on the streets. Secular humanist education is producing increasingly selfish, shallow, stupid, superficial socialists. Indoctrination is the name. And some people don't seem to get when it's too much. When is it too much? And maybe they didn't play with building blocks or something when they were kids and don't quite understand about when you overload something. And cruelty to animals results when people don't know how much is too much. Honestly and truly, have they never balanced a bicycle? And yes, this is what happens when the products of our education, indoctrination, gulag systems end up running harbors and container ships. Ideas and actions have consequences. All suffering ultimately is a result of mankind's sin and rebellion against Almighty God. Suffering is intrinsically related to the fall. There was no suffering prior to sin. Suffering in this world is part of a complex of God's judgment on the world. Everything has consequences. Sexual sin often leads to sexually transmitted diseases, STDs, as they call it. Herpes, gonorrhea, AIDS, 67 different bewildering, mind-boggling, if you haven't seen In Your Face, it will put the fear of hell into anyone who watches that. Gambling often leads to poverty and bankruptcy. Adultery often leads to divorce. Gossip separates friends. Our selfishness hurts others. Lies lead to bondage. Selfishness, cowardice, pride, greed, envy, and hate, they all cause untold suffering and pain. And let's not forget passivity and neutrality, which causes even more suffering. Inactivity and a heartless refusal to get involved compounds the problem. All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. And I'm sorry to say that in this last year of this lockdown lunacy, it's not just the wickedness of the New World Order and the Wuhan Health Organization and so on, it's the passivity and the neutrality and the cowardice and the silence of the silent majority that have actually enabled this. Yes, the bulk of people should have said, you have got to be kidding. We do not commit economic suicide in order to fight a virus. I mean, goodness sakes, I grew up with everything from typhoid, blackwater fever, malaria, bilharzia, tick bite fever. I mean, this is just normal growing up in Ries. It doesn't stop us going into the bush and in emissions. All of our missionaries have gotten malaria. We've all gotten every kind of, you name it, and it's just, who knows what fevers we've had. When I went for my tests from the transplant unit, pretty obscure, they did, who knows how many vials of blood they sucked out of me, maybe 20 something. And later on, saw this long list, I mean, it was pages and pages and pages of the diseases I'd had, most of which I couldn't spell, let alone remember or pronounce. Who knows what I'd had out there in the field. But you know, gee, we survive, and what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. So now we're going to commit suicide over a virus? It's like being afraid to die so you commit suicide. Does this really make sense? And yet, the bulk of people are just, oh, my business is non-essential. Oh, church are non-essential. Oh, we're not allowed to sing in church. And they accept us? That's actually even worse than the evil people trying to destroy our freedoms. It's the ones who just acquiesce. Okay, I think we get all that. But the big question is, but why do the innocent suffer? We will have personally seen many examples of this principle of, what man sows, that shall he reap. I mean, we understand. People go to the grand theft and the gamble, and they think they could win a million. They lose everything. OK. People who do the lotto, I'll point out to my children from early on, see those people queuing up at the lotto? They can't do maths. You've got a five times greater chance of being struck by lightning than you have of winning the lotto. But anyway, just in fact, you could say gambling is a tax and people are not good at mathematics. I'm not particularly good at mathematics either, but I know this much, don't get into debt and don't gamble. I mean, hey, it works. But we also know of many cases of people suffering as a result of no fault of their own. my wife, Laura, battling for 10 and a half years now against cancer. And, you know, there's something in you that says, this isn't fair. And Laura said to me that day, But she says, but why not me? She says, I'm a wicked sinner as well. I don't deserve any. Why should bad things only happen to other people? What makes me, just because I'm a Christian, exempt from suffering everyone else hasn't? She's got a different attitude, but the rest of us in the family, we feel this isn't fair. Why do bad things happen to good people? Many people are innocent victims of other people's unrighteous behavior, like if you're a victim of a drunken driver on the road, or you're a victim of a dangerous driver, or a taxi driver, which is the same thing. And if you are the victim of a crime, assault, murder, robbery, these things happen. So you get a lot of innocent victims of wicked behavior. Yet the Christian, confident in the sovereignty of God, can declare, and we know that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose. I quoted that verse back in October 1987. And I had great trouble saying it because I hadn't had any water for the previous 24 hours. I'd been in Livingston in a police cell, stripped, chained, blindfolded, beaten, dragged out and put in a plane and flown without being able to say anything or see anything until I got to Lusaka. And when we got to Lusaka, they took off our blindfolds. And the first thing I saw in my handcuffs was made in Great Britain. And we were laughing, actually. We struggled to recover. And then I tried to eke out enough. I was struggling to talk, because we haven't talked to drunk anything in 24 hours in stifling equatorial type of heat. I said, God works all things together for good, for those who love him, called according to his purpose. I could say it. But I can't say I fully believed it at that moment. But I had to hold on to the truth of Scripture until we saw how much good came out of that, what in our minds at the time was an unmitigated disaster. And yet how many good things came out of our imprisonment in Zambia. In the book of Genesis, we read of the treachery of Joseph's brothers in selling him to slave traders. Imagine selling your brothers into slavery. For 12 years, Joseph suffered unjustly as a slave and then as a prisoner in Egypt. Yet God raised him to being governor of Egypt to save the lives of millions from starvation. And later, Joseph could declare to his wicked, treacherous brothers, what you meant for evil, God used for good. That must have been a hard thing for him to say. I mean, he had a lot of power now, and they were at his mercy. But he recognized that God had brought good out of what they meant for evil. And so we can often say that, too. Now, of course, you could also point out that no one is really good. In the light of a holy God as revealed in the law, as it is written, there's none righteous, not one. There is none that understands. There's none that seeks after God. They've all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There's none who does good. No, not one, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That's just an abbreviation of Romans 3. It says more. And it makes me think of when our good friend R.C. Sproul was asked this question that we're considering tonight at a conference. They said, why do bad things happen to good people? And R.C. Sproul responded, Well, there was only one, and he volunteered. You can imagine it took time for this to sink in, the implication of what he is saying. And that might sound harsh, but it's true. Instead of asking why do bad things happen to good people, we should rather be asking why do so many good things happen to bad people? We generally receive much better than we deserve. God is most patient, gracious. I mean, I can look back and I can think of vast amounts of vehicle accidents I deserved. But by God's grace and angel's intervention, whatever happened, I didn't get them. I was an unbelievably reckless, can't even say teenager, in my 20s. What I did in my motorbike, I can't even say it was only when I was in my 20s. I was doing that sort of thing in my 40s too, but still. The amount of times I can think of what I deserved and what I didn't get, why do so many good things happen to me when I didn't even deserve that? And of course we can think of that of some others too. Another question which we should ask is why did Jesus Christ have to suffer? After all, he is the only truly good and righteous person who's ever lived. Yet Jesus was misunderstood, he was slandered, he was falsely accused, he went through a trumped up trial, he was lied about, he is hated, he is betrayed. He was forsaken by his followers. He is unjustly arrested. He is illegally tried. He was wrongly condemned. Jesus was mocked, beaten, whipped, insulted, slapped, and crucified. Why did the righteous one have to suffer? He suffered on behalf of us. He died for our sins, the just in the place of the unjust. God is compassionate. He entered this world and suffered everything we have suffered and much more. He even experienced the wrath of hell so that we would not have to. During his ministry on earth, our Lord Jesus gave sight to the blind. He gave hearing to the deaf. He gave speech to the dumb. He made the cripples walk. He cleansed the lepers. He even raised the dead. The shortest verse in the Bible is John 11, 35, Jesus wept. This is in the context of his friend Lazarus who had died. The Bible tells us to weep for those who weep, to laugh for those who laugh. And although Jesus was about to demonstrate his power to raise Lazarus from the dead, he was moved in the spirit and he was grieved over the suffering that his friends Mary and Martha were going through. We do not serve a God who's unmoved by our afflictions. We need to recognize that there may be a purpose behind our pain. You often hear PT instructors saying, no pain, no gain. That's often true. Yes, we may be the innocent victim of someone else's unrighteous behavior, such as vehicle accidents, crimes. But the Lord may also be chasing me for disobedience to his word. I remember my first motorbike accident. I'd only been riding a few months, and I was coming off the freeway into Kempton Park, and I was coming at such a speed, and I saw the half-brick before I hit it, but I had no time to swerve, and I hit this half-brick with my back wheel, flipped over, and as the bike was flipping, and I was rolling, and, you know, sort of like tar sky, tar sky, and, you know, seeing some of the street lights and cars and things. I knew exactly what God was getting my attention about. I think I'd done pretty full repentance before the bike came to an end and before I stopped rolling. I've heard people say that God never causes suffering or sickness. In my life, I've seen God use suffering and sickness to chastise, to discipline, to prepare me. And I've seen God use sickness in my family to bring my parents to the Lord. My parents were hardened. And my parents said to me things like, those of us who went through Second World War can't believe in God. And what we saw, the bombing of cities, destruction of whole cities. I mean, my mother from age six was going through 1,000 bomber raids in Berlin. and my dad was being bombed in London at his military base in North Africa. Both my parents came out of the Second World War completely agnostic to possibly atheist. There cannot be a God because of what we've seen and experienced. And yet my parents ended their lives as Christians through heart attacks, strokes, emphysema, my mom losing her leg, being amputated, all these things. God used sickness to bring my parents to the Lord. And I'm so glad he did. He didn't have to. They could have died with the first heart attack or stroke and so on. But in fact, I remember my father, who was converted two and a half years before he died, and him saying, I've wasted my life. There was a Bible in every room, in every hotel that I've managed, and I never read the Bible. Now I want to read the Bible. I can't. He was almost blind by that stage. We got him an audio Bible. But the point is, there's no doubt in my mind that God has used suffering and pain and sickness in order to bring my family members to the Lord. And he certainly used it in my life, personally. Suffering could also be part of the suffering for righteousness which all Christians are called to suffer. The Lord does send circumstances and people to help us develop our spiritual muscle and character. You, therefore, must endure hardship as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. Military training is designed to shape characters and teach skills to save lives, as we would be reminded regularly by the Sergeant Major. This could save your life. Pay attention. And what we were doing in the drills and the training and even the physical fitness, if you don't have this fitness, you may die in the field or cause the death of one of the other members of your platoon. And realizing this is serious. But it's even more serious in spiritual reality. Because when you're talking about eternity, it's bad enough to cause someone's death unnecessarily on Earth. But to cause people's deaths spiritually in eternity, I mean, that's how much more serious. Eternity is a lot longer than how much time we're going to have on earth. And yet so many people have a frivolous attitude and they don't realize how important it is for us to really have a strengthened, hardened, you know, our minds and our muscles need to be strengthened. 2 Timothy 3 verse 12, yes, and all who desire to live a godly life in union with Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. Notice what it does not say. It doesn't say that some of those. It doesn't say many. It doesn't say most. It says all who desire to live a godly life in union with Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. Not may, will. So as a Christian, we call to suffer something for Christ. And why not? He suffered a lot for us. It's a privilege to suffer for Christ. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to the praise and honor and glory at the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Maybe you've seen how gold is purified in the furnace and how they make those gold blocks. It's intense, intense, intense fires. And if gold must go through that to be purified, surely a faith which is much more precious should be expected to pass through some fire of tribulation. Beloved, think it not strange, concern the fiery trial, which is to try you as though some strange thing happened to you, but rejoice to the extent that you partake in Christ's sufferings, that when his glory is revealed, you will also be glad with exceeding joy. Suffering can be used by God to purify us and to prepare us for special service. All of God's servants have known suffering while God purged them and prepared them for service. Moses was 40 years in the wilderness before becoming deliverer of Egypt. David was an outlaw and a fugitive for many years before becoming the king of Israel. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. As pioneer missionary C.T. Studd declared, if Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him. When we experience trials, we need to search our hearts to see if there be some wicked ways in us that could be grounds for God to be correcting us. This chastisement is designed to lead us to repentance and to full restoration of fellowship. Is there something God is saying to you? Is there an error in your life that needs sorting out? You may not know why you're suffering, but it's important that you respond in a godly way. You may not be to blame for what happens to you, but you are responsible for how you react. For to this you were called because Christ suffered for us and left us an example that we should follow in his footsteps. This inspired the book In His Steps. How many of you would have read Sheldon's book In His Steps? Oh, that used to be such a popular book. It's a great book, In His Steps. It's also available as an audio book, well, well worth going through. As a congregation is challenged to consider before any decision, what would Jesus do? Now, unfortunately, it became a bracelet and a whole theme thing, but I think most people missed the main point. But the book was so much deeper, looking at how it affected a journalist and a businessman, a railwayman, and on and on, very, very good. Our Lord Jesus Christ taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan that we are to love our neighbor by alleviating the suffering of others. For this reason, throughout the last 2,000 years, millions of Christians have been rescuing abandoned babies, adopting orphans, opposing abortion, founding and maintaining hospitals in all corners of the globe, even in the most remote and dangerous areas, providing emergency relief aid, assistance, projects to uplift the poor and the needy. Christians have steadfastly opposed the slave trade and slavery and abolished infanticide and widow burning and cannibalism, setting the captives free. feeding the hungry, launching missions to bring countless millions to Christ. These are just some of the many ways in which Christians throughout history have worked to reduce suffering worldwide. When I went to the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, I went into the museum. The first thing I saw is the Bible of Henry Dumont, the founder of the Red Cross. And then there were verses from the Good Samaritan. Go and do likewise. And go and heal the sick. And all these different verses of to love your neighbor and to love your enemy. Quotes from the Bible, quotes from Jesus. This is in the Red Cross Museum. This is the foundation of the Red Cross. Now, I think the bulk of people who work for the Red Cross don't even seem to know it. Maybe they've never been to their museum. But Henry Denunt was an evangelical Christian motivated by the teachings of Christ to launch the greatest humanitarian movement in all of history. We also need to consider what is the worst suffering imaginable? The answer is nothing that we'll have experienced in this life. The most extreme pain and suffering will be experienced in an eternity in hell, the lake of fire, separate from God forever. The Bible clearly teaches that those who reject Christ will be cast into the lake of fire. Now some people raise issues of suffering and evil in the world as some kind of theoretical smokescreen that they can use to reject the free gift of salvation from Almighty God. We need to warn people about the reality of a holy God whose laws we have violated and of the very real danger of an eternity of regrets in hell. God now commands all men everywhere to repent. All suffering ultimately is a result of mankind's rebellion against Almighty God. When a person says, why is there suffering in the world? You can say, because mankind chose to rebel against God and to violate his laws. No one is sinless except Jesus Christ, and he suffered so that we would not have to suffer eternally for our sins. There are no truly good people on earth. We are all sinful in the light of God's law. Remember when you meet a person and you ask, how are you? And the person says, I'm good. You can remind him, but Jesus said, no one is good except God alone. and there you've introduced eternity, the holiness of God and depravity of man, and you've set up the conversation to move in an evangelistic direction. We can learn and we can grow through suffering. Pain can yield positive results in our character development. What others mean for evil, God can use for good. God works all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Jesus Christ came and shared in human suffering. He suffered more than any other man. We can and must help alleviate the sufferings of others. It's one of the commands of Christ, to love our neighbor, to love strangers. In fact, Jesus Christ invented charity. Benevolence to strangers was unknown before the coming of Christ. Hospitals grew out of the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ. charity to strangers, kindness to enemies. All of this came from teachings of Christ. Human suffering is ultimately caused by human sin, and God nailed that problem to the cross almost 2,000 years ago. So any questions, any comments? Why is there suffering in the world today? Questions? Maybe a comment. I think it's good that we look at the head, if you would, the source of the different worldviews, whether Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity even, rather than simply the followers of that religion. When we think through the reasoning of pain and suffering, because I mean, I can think, it wasn't mentioned here, but I mean, even in the name of Christianity, there's a tremendous amount of harm that's been done. And you look at even God's rebuke to whether it was His people or the church in time later. It's a tremendous hand that came against them and saying, my own people, you have gone so wayward. So really to look at the example of Christ, I think it's so important to keep it there and to say even He suffered as the only, the comment that you made about there was only one and He volunteered. And that's really how we come to know all of us being wicked. and gone after our own gods, our own way. I think that's so essential, it's so important what you mentioned in the founder of those religions. All of them have turned from God except Christ, who is a lone God and is alone perfect and everyone else, we deserve that? Good question. I could certainly have added in some things on the evil done in the name of the church, but I think I do enough exposing Catholicism and other subject matters so people know about the Inquisition and what the papacy did, burning people at the stake for translating the Bible and things like that. Yes, lots of evil has been done in the name of the church as well. And that's why we hold to the five solas of the Reformation. Solus Christus, Christ alone is the head of the church. Sola Scriptura, scripture alone is the ultimate authority. Salvation is sola gratia, by the grace of God alone. Sola fide, received by faith alone. And soli deo gloria, solely to the glory of God. I mean, those five solas help to keep us on track. But when people in the church have drifted from that, Lots of evil has been done, and a lot of people have been hurt. And it's very sobering to think of the evil done in the name of Christ by people who claim to be following Christ, like persecuting the Waldensians, and the Law Lords, and the Albigensians, and so many others, who were massacred because of their love for the Bible. And church leaders were, and bear in mind, who crucified Christ? religious leaders. It wasn't Pontius Pilate that said it. Pontius Pilate didn't wake up one morning and say, yeah, let's go and crucify Jesus. He actually declared him innocent a few times over and tried to pass him off on King Herod. But the religious leaders were campaigning for the crucifixion of Christ. So again, again, it should remind us that religion doesn't equal good. In fact, a lot of evil in the world has been done in the name of religion. And when people come up and say, Most of the wars in history have been caused by religion. You can say, that's true, when you recognize that secular humanism and communism are religions. Because, in fact, this is amazing when you get atheists and secular humanists trying to blame the church. Of all evil done in the name of religion, you can point out far more evil and suffering and massacres have been done in the name of atheism and communism, secular humanism, by secular humanist, socialist, and communist governments than all the religions combined. You could add Islam, Buddhism, Catholicism, all of it together. In fact, in the 20th century alone, secular humanists and atheists, in the name of liberation and freedom, communism and so on, have caused more suffering than all the others combined. So if a person wants to come out with an anti-religious statement, accept it by pointing out to them that if you recognize that secular humanism and communism are religions. Can we review history and see when was the Lord most pleased with us? Like, for example, Wow, that was the dark ages. We were supposed to be terrible then. We were axing and fighting wars then, I'm sure. Nowhere near as much as lately, though. In fact, in the Middle Ages, when they were building cathedrals, it was a very peaceful time. Actually, when you look at it also, they didn't have usury. They banished the usury bankers, and they were not allowing charging of interest on loans. And so in the Middle Ages, this is something that I'm taking now from Stephen Mitford Goodson, History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind. When Stephen Goodson, who used to be a director of Southern Reserve Bank, he pointed out that in the Middle Ages, when they were building the cathedrals, It was when they had no usury, and therefore, taxes were at the lowest ever. And people had to work only about 120 days of the year. And about 140 days a year, and they had 220 holidays in the year. And so they're building cathedrals with all the excess time and energy and surplus produce that they had, because they weren't enslaved to these bankers as we are these days. There's a very interesting point. And when you look at these cathedrals, which have not been excelled in architecture. And they were built in the dark ages, as he said. It doesn't look that dark when you go to Wells Cathedral and you see, in the 11th century, they're building these phenomenal stained glass windows. What's dark about that? It's light. And the great cathedrals, the great universities, the greatest libraries in the world were being set up 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th century, It just should humble us, think we've got so much and yet they didn't have the earth-moving equipment and machines that we've got today that were building these things with what we would consider pretty primitive methods, scaffolding and so on. other things as well, weighing them down with sin and bringing the wrath of God. Those things are sure in non-existence. Those of you who've ever seen simple lifestyle people like the Amish, the Mennonites and I've ministered amongst in fact I ran a Reformation 500 conference right in Amish country in Lancaster County and I had Mennonites and Amish attending my Reformation 500 conferences back in 2017. This is quite interesting and staying on one of their farms and I must say the The Amish, you can only respect them. They're living a simple lifestyle, horse and buggies and no electricity and a whole lot of things like that. And you think, why would you miss out on all these labor-saving devices? And as you can see, we don't do that. But you know, they're happier and healthier people. They don't have Alzheimer's and diabetes and all these things that we are plagued with in our societies. They live far more close to the soil, straightforward in its family and faith and so on. And that's one extreme. But you know, we can only do ourselves favors to live a more simple, God-centered, family-based lifestyle. It's too much technology. Technology must be a servant. If technology becomes your master, it's a tyrant. Somebody calculated that in a few decades, the Amish would outnumber the secular ethnic Europeans of USA. Wow. Because they're actually having families. That's right. You mean, as opposed to Europeans who have several abortions and adopt a dog? Well, yes, that's the other way of doing it. I don't know what's going on in the Western world, but I was on radio yesterday with a good friend, Andrew Carrington Hitchcock, and he was telling me that they're still not allowed to go to restaurants, and he still can't visit his girlfriend or go on a date with her. Now, in such severe lockdown, he's only allowed to visit his mother. There's only one other person that he's allowed to visit, and that register carries on. They're promising that they'll be able to go to restaurants mid-April, and that by May, they might even be able to get to the gym. And this is England. And I was saying, well, how would they even know if you go to visit your girlfriend? He said, oh, they know. They're tracking you. They're tracking you from your phone. They're tracking you with close circuit TV cameras. London's one of the most surveillance societies in the world. What most people miss is that when George Orwell wrote his book, 1984, which was based in London, didn't base it in Moscow or Peking or something. He based it in London. And his Ministry of Truth resembles BBC enormously. In fact, he worked for the BBC. So I think most people have missed the fact that George Orwell was warning people about what's happening to England, where it's going, from his background and experience being in the Ministry of Propaganda and so on during the war. And the trouble is when I asked, well, In South Africa, we'd just do it anyway. He said, but you can't get away with it in England. Our surveillance system and our police are just too efficient. I had Wolfram here today, Professor Rainer from Germany, and he was saying, you would not want to be in Germany at this time. He said, they're so efficient. Their lockdown is enforced. We can do things over here. without our government knowing or intervening because they're just not that competent and efficient, and we can be grateful for that. But when you get efficient countries like Victoria Province states in Australia or Canada, do you know Canada's just arrested a pastor for having church services. And this is a small church of under hundreds. The building's not bigger than this hall here. And they have been fined $10 million for meeting during lockdown. $10 million. Million. Not Zimbabwe dollars, Canadian dollars. It's just, are these people insane? And in Australia, you can see the film of them coming into someone's home that's being filled in, arresting a pregnant woman who's about to go to hospital, handcuffing her in front of her family, dragging her off. And she says, I haven't broken the law. And he says, yes, ma'am, you have. What did I do wrong? You posted on Facebook that people shouldn't have to wear masks. She posts on Facebook something about masks, and they come into her home and arrest her? The insanity out there, absolutely unbelievable. Well, I'm sure JP can say more about London, but I had no idea the lockdown was that bad down there. Well, the police, like you saw there, I've spoken to them, and I can verify they are absolutely, apparently they've been pincushioned with a lot of injections, and I believe one of them's caused a kind of a lobotomy, because they completely don't have any empathy whatsoever. They look like normal people and stuff, but there's no reasoning with them whatsoever. It's a corona act, and it's like you've committed a major crime. And they will enforce it. And hit people in the head with truncheons, which is supposed to be good for your health as well, because they're protecting our health, stopping us catching coronavirus. There's no logic whatsoever. They're obeying rules, and then people have confronted them and said, Is there any rule you guys won't carry out? And it's quite scary, because they don't really have an answer. These are people who are no doubt products of the state education indoctrination system. And if they've watched a lot of Hollywood nonsense, they probably can't think critically anymore. That's sad. In contrast to the Amish, of whom I think a few months ago it was said they didn't have any reported cases COVID because they don't have TV. That's brilliant. Why is it that no one in your community has got coronavirus? We don't have TV. Yes. the Church of God, I'll say the two, the Church through Christianity, whatever you want to call it, experiences exponential growth, steering times for persecution. And I was just wondering whether that's the same in contrast with widespread suffering like the world wars and so on. You mentioned about your parents turning away from God as a result of that, and I'm sure maybe there were a lot of other people who turned to God as a result of that. I don't know that you can say it always necessarily has such a result, but it can. So, studying Europe, 64% of people in Europe were in church every Sunday, on average, before the First World War. It dropped down to 42%. before the Second World War. After the Second World War, church attendance in Europe plummeted to 5%, in Britain to 4%. Now look at that, from 34% down to 4% in basically a generation, from 1914 to 1950s. It's just staggering. So the Second World War was, what made the Second World War so devastating was that Christians were killing Christians. mostly, except on the Eastern Front. But on the Western Front, it was primarily Christian nations fighting Christian nations. And this, I think, was devastating. So my father, for example, he said, we sang Christmas carols to one another, the Afrika Korps and the Eighth Army. We played football together. There was times of sharing ration packs and caring for the wounded of one another and showing pictures of our families. And, you know, they always had better chocolates and we had great pies. And there was this gentleman-nearest. So he looked and he said, Africa Corp were gentlemen. Honorable enemy. And that also broke down their faith at the end, thinking, why are we fighting them? So this was a general pattern. He came to the conclusion at the end, when they invaded Germany, he looked at all the devastation the bombers had done, and he said, we fought the wrong enemy. Germans aren't our enemy. The Russians are our enemy, meaning the communists, Soviets. So I think that shattered a lot of the faith. So my parents didn't want to talk about the war much. Got just little bits and pieces through. Once they got converted, it was different. They opened up more. But I think it was very devastating. You can just imagine if you're a Christian, now you're coming in to liberate. And you see our bombers have bombed their churches, destroyed their schools, devastated these things. We're the good guys. What are we doing this for? What are our politicians sending us here for? So I think that was shattering. The war in Europe was particularly shattering. Now, there's difference in the Pacific War, where there was a lot of the people in the American army who were taken over these islands who came back as missionaries. But that, I think, was different. You had Christians on one side, and you had Buddhists and Shintos on the other. And it wasn't the same thing of Christians fighting Christians. But on the Western front, Christians fighting Christians, I think, was absolutely devastating. You can just imagine. Yeah, so I know, for example, our battles on the border, I didn't have a conflict of conscience, because we were fighting atheists who killed people, planted landmines, kidnapped, and all that sort of thing. And we saw some of them come to Christ, and I must say, my faith has only strengthened the army, and I came out a much stronger Christian than I went in. But obviously, that didn't work for my dad, who had been confirmed in an Anglican church, had been a choir boy, and he just turned his back on his faith after the war, and was ashamed to talk about the war. But when I brought it up and when I was converted, it was like if you'd seen what we had seen, you'd know there couldn't be a God because of what happened in the Second World War. So that's an attitude of a whole generation of people who are traumatized that brutal, brutal total war where it was justified to bomb cities. I mean, just think, when 1,000 bombers comes over a city and drops 1,000 tons of high incendiary bombs on that city, followed by another 1,000 bombers later that night on the same city, followed by another 1,000 bombers just now of the US Air Force and drops bombs on the same city in the morning, like Captain Dresden, Valentine's Day. What are you doing? Wiping out vast numbers of schools, churches, museums, hospitals, homes, pets, brothers, sisters, mothers. How can you justify that? Some of the most, they said it was the most barbaric warfare in the history of the world. Not Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun caused the devastation that Christian air forces in the Second World War did in bombing the cities of Germany. This is the greatest war crime in the history of mankind. But it's been glamorized in the movies so that you can have happy music while you've got Memphis Bell and all this thing while they're going on Hanover Street, while they're going and raining bombs on cities. And you're meant to cheer for these guys and hope that these bombers get home. You think of the damage done by one PLO car bomb or one ANC car bomb up on Church Street. in Pretoria back in 1983. I mean, that's traumatic. I still know people who scarred for life from that. But that's nothing compared to what 1,000 bombers, with each Lancaster bomber has got 1,400 pounds of bomb capacity. No? Is that right? No. It's 14,000. It's 14 tons, 14,000. kilograms of bombs that they could drop. It's just mind boggling. And we know that a man who comes with a suitcase bomb or plants a landmine is a terrorist. What do you call mobilizing entire thousand bomber raids on a city? It's soul destroying if you get yourself to trying to justify that. How can you justify that? So yes, I mean, having been brought up by that generation who was secularized by the war, I was brought up that there was no Sunday school, there was no church, there was no prayer, there wasn't grace before meals, there was nothing, nothing Christian. I mean, it's just hard to imagine. There wasn't a prayer ever for anything. No pulling out the Bible. So I was brought up in that kind of home. And so I was as secular as it came. And to suddenly be confronted with the gospel at age 17 for the first time changed my life. It took a lot longer to change my parents' life. I guess they were just scornful, very scornful. What didn't help was I was the youngest in my family as well. And so the baby of the family is like, ugh. Yes, thank you. Maybe just a thought on that, because it's a really intriguing question. A verse that comes to mind is in Psalm 91, because the psalmist writes that God will deliver you. So this is one who puts his trust in God. God will deliver you from the snare of the fowler. It seems a particular trap. And from deadly pestilence, in general. Maybe the simple distinction between persecution of Christians and suffering within a given environment would be whether it's a general pain or a pointed pain. And of both of those, where there's a renewed heart, one can cry out, as the writer here, because, well, basically in a love, in a trust, and God rescuing him from trouble. It seems as though it's really just a question of, is it a specific thing against this one person or a general thing? And in both of those cases, where God has drawn that heart, where that person trusts in God, whether it's a plague or whether it's a trap, that God is the one still who brings it. So I don't know. It seems that's the main distinction I'm wondering. It's the same motivation. as to our response is, do we hold fast to God? Does he hold fast to us? And then in either of those, it's the same. Good. Any other comments, observations? Rosanne? No, it's just something that I've recently realized. Well, actually, when you started the topic of suffering, it becomes clear to me that even though the punishment for sinning against God is suffering, God still does everything he can to alleviate the pain of suffering for us. For example, I mean, just by giving us laws and guidelines. I mean, if you think about the 10 commandments, technically everything in there is something that avoids or that makes suffering less. For example, if you, the repercussions of lying, stealing, adultery and covetousness all leads to more suffering. But God puts these laws in place for us to have less suffering if we obey them. So it's almost like the blessing of obeying God's law is less suffering. And a day of rest as well. And then also everything, I mean Jesus tells us to feed the poor, the sick, the widow, the orphan, and results to carry each other's burdens. Yes. And then, and love our neighbor and our enemies. Those are all things that actually are supposed to alleviate the pain of suffering. Yes. And then ultimately, Jesus dying for us. It's just amazing how the Bible is like so, a handbook to basically, Yes. If we take the Great Commission seriously and the Great Commandments seriously, then yes, we can be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. So we can spend the time complaining, why is there so much evil in the world? Or we can do something to alleviate that suffering and to be the light in the darkness. Right. Good. Any other observations, comments? Yeah, I want to ask your opinion. I view it as a war on the populace, as a war on individuals, on people around the world. And sort of the New Testament in the Bible is very much love your neighbor, turn the other cheek, pray for your enemies, whereas the Old Testament's a little bit different from my understanding of it. When's the time, is there going to be a time to actually physically fight back? Yes, definitely there is a time to fight. There is. And we can tackle it on another evening because that's a nice big important subject too. When is it right to fight? And it might just be interesting to observe in the Bible, there's six different words for kill. There's do not commit murder, which, of course, 6th of March, do not take an innocent life, do not kill. But then there's also executing, because just two chapters on from Exodus 20, which is don't commit murder, it says that you to execute mergers. When people misinterpret, do not commit murder to do not kill, then they think, then how can God command you to kill murderers? Because it's a different, in Hebrew there's six clear different words. Just like we've got four words for love, so there's six different words for kill. So there's also killing in combat, in war, is not the same as killing in self-defense, which is not the same as, killing an animal for food, which is not the same as manslaughter, which is accidental death, such as, speaks of a person chopping wood in a forest and accidentally the axe head flies off and hits someone and he dies, and of course it was unintentional. He's still responsible. I mean, it's involuntary manslaughter, but you're still responsible. And so there's different levels of consequences and punishment for these areas. So again, in the Bible, you can see the Psalms, the prayer book of the Bible, the biggest book of the Bible, the hymn book of the Bible, written mostly by a soldier, King David. And he could be a man of God's own heart, even though he certainly was involved in some pretty violent actions. And he was a righteous king after he'd killed a lot of Philistines. But when he plotted for the killing of one innocent man, he was disqualified from building the temple. You're either Hittite and so on. So you can see how there's a lot of distinctions. And we must understand there's a time to fight, and there's a time to defend, and there's a time for war, and there's a time for peace. It's actually from Ecclesiastes 3. And there's a time for love, and there's a time for hate. There's time to dance, there's time not to dance. So the Bible speaks of these different times and seasons, and we need to recognize that there is a time when it's right to plant, defending your family and so on. The worst thing in history, though, in my mind, was when Christians were conned by non-Christians into killing fellow Christians for no good reason in the First World War. The First World War was the greatest catastrophe in the history of civilization and started to unravel a situation where, in 1914, Christians ruled the world. And the superpowers were the Protestant nations, Germany, Britain, United States of America, and whether Orthodox in the case of Russia or Catholic in the case of France and Austria, or Protestant in the case of Germany, Britain, and America, Christians ruled the world, with the exception of Japan. China and the Ottoman Empire. And the Ottoman Empire was falling apart, and the Chinese were very weak. And Japan was trying to copy the West as much as it could anyway at that time, because Christianity was highly respected. 1914, Christians ruled the world. Now I don't know of one single country on the planet that could be called truly Christian. How did that come about? The great difference between the first World Mission Conference in 1910 and the second Great World Mission Conference in 2010 What's the difference? 1914. Christians got derailed, deceived into killing their fellow Christians. No other power could have destroyed Christian Europe except Christian Europe. Christian Europe committed auto genocide. They wiped themselves out and they didn't just kill millions of their own young people. They killed the faith of many because people couldn't understand how could Christian Europe, the most civilized part of the world, end up doing something like this. And I mean, this is what I did my doctorate on, the greatest century of missions, 19th century, and working on the next one on the worst century of persecution. How is it that the greatest century of missions was derailed in the worst century of persecution? First World War. followed by the second, which was round two of the same war, basically. Europe's 30 years war. And we need to understand the mess we're in in the world today is a direct result of what Hollywood glamorized. Remember, Hollywood's made up of anti-Christian pagans who blaspheme Christ, who hate Christ, who hate Christianity, who love pornography, who promote everything evil. And yet we've got people all over the world, Christians, who have allowed Hollywood to defile our minds and distort our understanding of things. And a key part of the narrative to justify the chaos in the world today is we fought for justice and freedom and civilization and all this other junk, blatant lies, which they've managed to sell to generations to glamorize the dumbest, most wicked, evil things ever done in the history of civilization. And that justifies why everything's in chaos now. And if you suggest otherwise, they will throw all kinds of insults your way. So this, to me, is a key thing. When I was a delegate at the Cape Town 2010, the biggest missions conference in history, right here in the Cape Town National Conference Center, I had to compare it to Edinburgh in 1910, 100 years before. And it wasn't a comparison. It was a contrast. 1910, coming out of the Great Century Missions, they were predicting the extinction of slavery, the extinction of false religions, the ending of all false religions. They were predicting that within 50 years, by 1960, the world would be thoroughly evangelized, Protestant. And they could expect the beginning of the millennium by about the year 2000. That was consensus in 1910. They could never have imagined what I heard in 2010, resurgence of widow burning, resurgence of slavery, resurgence of all these different abusive women. It's just mind boggling how bad the world's gotten in the last half century. Direct result of Christians fighting for pagans against fellow Christians. And anyway, as you can see, that's quite a big subject matter. But this is one reason why there's a lot of suffering in the world. Christians being gullible and allowing themselves to be deceived and abused and used by the pagans. And this lockdown's another case in point, where let's destroy our businesses, let's destroy our economies, for what? The flu, you know. the Wuhan virus, because the Wuhan Health Organization told you so. And it's insane. And to be honest, I think the economic disaster done by this lockdown could be akin to the thousand bomber raids on the cities of Europe in terms of actual devastation of economies. This is going to be catastrophic. How many people have lost their livelihoods, lost their business, lost everything? How many people have committed suicide? How many people have died unnecessarily because of this lockdown? This lockdown is just another attempt by the new world order people to destroy and extinguish Christian freedom. So resistance is critical. So if somebody throws at you, why is there suffering in the world? I've got you a few ideas that you can springboard. I'm so glad you asked that question because People are asking and are trying to use it as a stone to throw against God or belief in God. But we can use it to take it right back to them as to its human wickedness, selfishness, rebellion, anti-Christian religions, all these different things, especially secular humanism and communism. They've caused so much of this chaos. And so they want to blame God for their own rebellion to God and his laws. I mean, that's what it comes down to. It's God's fault. The Bible says that people ruin their lives, get their hearts enraged against the Lord.