That we think it smart to ask this question shows that we have no idea what God had designed power for.
The Bible has always proclaimed the truth. And the Bible’s proclamation of the truth has no substitute! Therefore, the truth had already been given to human beings from the beginning.
God had designed everything in creation for good—including power!
The perfect world that many of us believe a perfect God would have created, was indeed, the world which God created. And that perfect world is called heaven, where God, to this day, continues to dwell in infinite majesty with the angels that serve Him. And aside from heaven, nothing else existed anywhere!
God, in that perfect world that is befitting of the all-powerful God (John 14:1-2), puts His power for good in permanent display through all eternity, with God holding it all together (John 5:17) without any wear and tear (Matthew 6:19-20).
The perfect God who made a perfect heaven as His eternal abode; in His perfect knowledge, know that only love leads to peace and harmony. So, He mandated all His creations in heaven to love one another as they each love themselves.
He that is love, gives love to all His creations, knowing through His perfect understanding, that love only thrives where there is freedom, and so, gives free will to all his creations, to choose love and continue to live in the perfection He had created them all!
Where the only two choices are the good that gives life and anything else which leads to death, freedom of choice boils down to how genuinely anyone trusts and respects the one who gave them the choices: That translates into how genuinely anyone truly desires to live (Genesis 2:17):
It does not matter that the only alternative available (aside from life) is death, some will choose that alternative: If not for anything else, to see whether what was said will happen, happens — 2 Philippians 2:10 NIV — “They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved!”
The second human being who was created by God on the earth, Eve, demonstrated that some will choose death, out of some misguided logic or understanding — “when the woman saw” (Genesis 3:6).
Evil exists in the world not because God intended evil or created it! But because those to whom God granted free will, chose not “to love and be saved” (2 Thessalonians 2:10), and so continue to call God’s bluff in their unbelief.
Freedom, meaning free from domination, tells everyone that the alternative to freedom is domination, which does not promote love, but rather, breeds hatred, suspicion, and mistrust.
If the all-powerful God chooses domination over freedom, who can survive it — Exodus 33:3 NIV — “Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.”
The Bible says that when the Israelites heard these distressing words, that they all went into mourning (Exodus 33:4).
The Israelites were one little nation of people on the earth, who would all be destroyed in an instant if God had chosen to dominate them instead of loving and gentling guiding them to His righteousness.
As a demonstration of what God can accomplish in His domination of the universe, in just one simple step, He destroyed Satan and one third of all the angels of heaven inside the water of creation in the hollow of His mighty hand (Revelation 12:7-9).
Anywhere the ruling powers chooses domination over fairness, the people under the dominating power suffer great miseries. But domination is what we all use our powers for in our world; because we all refuse to love; and now, fault God for loving us, instead of dominating all of us with His power.
We should look around and see what our domination of the less powerful people of the world have turned our world into; before we criticize the God of love for choosing freedom over domination—(free from domination)! That will tell us whether we are making sense with our criticism of God or not.
God showed His eternal revulsion for domination by those to whom He had given power, by readily stripping Lucifer of all Grace and glory (Job 26:5-6), and consigning him, as Satan, to an eternal life of indescribable austerity, which got Satan thrashing around since before time began (Revelation 12:1-17), in hope of finding some relief.
The Bible says that there is only one reason why we hold our countless forums and ask all these seemingly smart questions. Here it is that one reason:
“The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, 10 and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.” (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12 NIV)
Talking about God or trying to resolve our curiosities about God in secular language and through secular methods, will not help anybody understand anything they do not already know — Isaiah 29:16 NIV — “You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, “You did not make me”? Can the pot say to the potter, “You know nothing”?
So, judge for yourself. We did not create God. God created every single one of us; and will never submit Himself to our insults (Romans 9:20)!
Our problem is that we have all chosen to remain uninformed about the word of God, because of our respective elections to focus on human science and put behind us everything we have been taught about God and his sternness on living our lives in His discipline — Proverbs 3:11-12 NIV — “My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, 12 because the Lord disciplines those he loves,as a father the son he delights in.”
Anyone who puts their interest in finding the truth of God in the Bible will never continue to ask these meaningless questions, because God will reward their efforts with true knowledge and guide them through the life of holiness; and help them coast to salvation.
God had allowed evil to exist since Satan brought evil into the equation of life, so that human beings and spiritual beings can understand the immeasurable value of good, which God had given freely to all of His creations. When evil was not in existence, a third of the angels of God in heaven, took good for granted, and perverted God’s justice and became wicked!
Satan had protested the punishment he had received from God for his wickedness (Revelation 12:10)—the same way Cain later did in Genesis 4:13-14 NIV — “Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is more than I can bear. 14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”
See the illustration of God’s throne room in the following diagram, as described in Revelation 4.
Figure 1: Throne room of God as described in Revelation 4.
And exactly as God allowed Cain to roam the earth freely after Cain’s conviction of wickedness against his own flesh and blood (Genesis 4:15-16), God had allowed Satan to roam the earth (Job 1:7), to give Satan the opportunity to prove to the hosts of heaven (Ephesians 3:9-11 NIV), his accusation (Revelation 12:10) that God treated him more harshly than God treats the powerless human beings whom God had created in Christ to rule and reign with Him forever (Hebrews 1:14), due to Satan’s trampling underfoot of the same word of God that gave Satan life as Lucifer, and sustained him as a highly decorated angel of God (Ezekiel 28:12-15 NIV).
Satan’s accusations of the humans for God’s voidance of Satan’s spirit, made it necessary that evil exists alongside good, to help human beings appreciate the gift of love and the elevation to glory they had received from God, which was not on merit from their accomplishments, but out of God’s love, and His mercy for what Satan’s accusations have to put human beings through.
Evil coming into life’s equation, was Satan’s doing, and not God’s design. Justice, however, is God’s design.
Satan’s appeal to God is the reason why evil has continued to coexist alongside good; and will, until Satan’s appeal hearing is finalized—hence, the Last Day!
The entire existence of nature, of space, of the universe and of human beings on the earth, together, constitute a court session (Revelation 12:1-17 NIV); (Ephesians 3:9-11) that was convened by God, to give Satan the chance to prove that the wickedness for which he was convicted by God, does not deserve the punishment it brought to him and the fallen angels he misled!
No one destroys any evidence in the middle of a court trial: Evil, which is what the devil was charged for, that got him voided of all Grace, is the evidence against Satan, and so, must be preserved by God in God’s heavenly court, until the final verdict is reached in Satan’s appeal to his criminal conviction and punishment!
That is the truth of all human lives here on the earth. God’s justice (Job 1:8-12) allows Satan to search all human beings for the evidence Satan claimed he could produce from humans, to support his appeal for reinstatement by God (Isaiah 14:4-21 NIV); (Ezekiel 28:1-19 NIV); (Revelation 12:1-17 NIV).
So, human beings of all human generations and the lives they live on earth, are part of the evidence which God must preserve until verdict is rendered on Satan’s appeal of his conviction by God.
The elevation of human beings above the powerful and highly decorated angels of heaven who were here long before us (1 Corinthians 1:9-10), made it mandatory that we endure the entire trial (Revelation 12:1-17 NIV), to prove Satan a liar and a hopeless victimizer of his brothers, for personal gain and glory.
Evil must persist until Satan’s case is finalized; and the final judgment pronounced on Satan, his cohorts and the human beings who walked away from God’s righteousness and perverted God’s justice the same way Satan and the fallen angels did and continues to do (Revelation 19:20-21 NIV); (Revelation 20:10-15 NIV).
And that final judgment will be pronounced on the guilty, by the only fair judge that there is, God Himself, through His Eternal Word, Jesus Christ (John 5:22-23 NIV). See the diagram below: “Obey God completely and continue to count on God’s promises, because heaven is a real place.”
Although no thanks to Satan, evil existing alongside good, brings out fully, the merits of good, allowing human beings to see and appreciate the good that God had given freely to them, which many, have been trampling underfoot in their ignorance—the same wickedness that got Lucifer stripped of life and all glory (Isaiah 14:4-21 NIV); (Ezekiel 28:1-19 NIV), etc., which put human beings of all generations, on the path of salvation that we are in.
Figure 2: Obey God completely and continue to count on God’s promises, because heaven is a real place. The round object in the diagram is a simulation of our universe rotating inside the water of creation in the hollow of God’s mighty hand. The object in the diagram is, therefore, much larger than the universe in comparison with God’s mighty hand inside which it rotates inside water, at a speed that is many orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light, at which it completes a full rotation—one universe day—in one thousand earth years.
It was Adam and Eve’s disobedience of God that made it imperative, that every human being experience lack and austerity (Genesis 3:16-19), to appreciate the good that was made abundantly available to them without first meriting it.
No one has the right to walk around and claim that he or she is looking for the truth because the whole truth was given to all human beings in the Bible. God has made all the truths plain for all human beings to understand.
Every human being’s problem is disobedience—and not because the Bible said so (Romans 3:9-18)!
Who doesn’t sometimes react negatively to instructions, no matter how well-intended the instructions are? That is the human beings’ sinful nature right there, which we all acquired through the Original Sin!
Freedom to us has come to mean: “leave me alone even if my body is caught on fire. Just let me be. It is my problem, not yours!”
God did not make us that way. Every baby stare blankly into people’s face, hardly blinking, because we all came into the world without any clue as to why they were here, or what was going on!
We all came in as babies, and the world quickly took control of our lives even before we knew who we are; and began to stuff us with what the world wanted us to know.
And our parents, who had long walked away from God, got us gobbling whatever the world had to offer, that the world did not have to force its values on us. If our parents were religious, they got us into the church and exposed us to the concept of God and moral values. If our parents were irreligious, we just stayed with the world.
And the gurus of the world who asked a lot of philosophical questions that put God in the negative light, mesmerize us with their geniuses. Through it all, God remained silent, or so we were made to believe:
We were constantly bombarded with serious doubts and dissatisfaction about a lot of what the world experts were teaching us. But because we have become worse than our parents that got us hooked on the glittering world systems, we decided that there were no places to turn to. So, we got over our frustrations, and believed what everybody else believed, especially since the political cycles came around so often.
God is never silent in anyone’s life. He wired every human being for continual communication from Him, and ensures that all the circuits for that continual communication with each person remain open, in spite of our many efforts to shut them down, which is why, when the world pushes us to our breaking points, some of us recognize those circuits and grab them, and emerge from the pit, and wrap our arms around God.
Any human being that desires to free themselves from the stranglehold of sin and enslavement to the worldly systems, always has the power in themselves to do so. God makes sure of this because He has no competition when it comes to salvation. The world only snares. The world has no interest whatsoever in saving anyone! God is in the business of rescuing lost souls without competition.
It is human disobedience that activated the evil which the devil brought into the world, to now, affect human beings. Evil was in the world before God placed Adam in the world because Satan and the fallen angels had already been stripped of Grace and banished from heaven to the space of the earth and the universe — Luke 10:18 NIV — “He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.””
But evil had no effect on human beings because God had shielded human beings from evil with His abundant Grace, by partitioning the space of the earth and the universe into death realms and life realms, and placing human beings and His church in the life realms while He restrained the devil and his evil minions inside the death realms:
Revelation 12:6 NIV — “The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.”
Revelation 12:16 NIV — “But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth.”
Because free will requires accountability, God told Adam and Eve to remain in obedience of Him or perish (Genesis 2:17).
The humble and the loyal obey; but the proud and the pompous disobey because knowledge intoxicates, when knowledge is not bound by the discretion that only comes from true spirituality!
Adam and Eve, like the learned of our time, elevated their minds over their spirits; and followed the devil into the pit, relinquishing the dominion of the earth to the devil—Genesis 3:6 NIV — “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”
The mind is every human being’s greatest enemy! The mind must be tamed for anyone to understand God and the true workings of the human body, the human mind, and the human spirit.
See the diagram below: “The mind is every human being’s greatest enemy when the mind is not tethered to the human spirit.”
Figure 3: The mind is every human being’s greatest enemy when the mind is not tethered to the human spirit.
In conclusion, God did not create evil to spite mankind. The devil’s sinful desire to become equal with God brought evil into existence:
“How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn!You have been cast down to the earth,you who once laid low the nations! 13 You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens;I will raise my throneabove the stars of God;I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. 14 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” 15 But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit. (Isaiah 14:12-15 NIV)
And Eve’s sinful desire to become equal with God, incentivized by the devil, activated evil on the earth, and let it lose onto all of God’s natural creation on the earth:
“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it … Cursed is the ground because of you …” (Genesis 3:6,15-17).
God instantly gave the devil the punishment he deserved for bringing death into life’s equation, which the devil appealed to God to rescind, alleging that the humans, whom God planned to create and elevate above the angels, are as corrupt as he, the devil, is.
For the sake of justice, God decided to hear the devil’s appeal, giving him permission to search human beings for the evidence of wickedness he claimed he could produce from them, to show that God is partial to the humans.
But the humans, having all been created in Christ to do good works (Ephesians 2:10) before time started (that is, before the devil’s appeal hearing started in God’s heavenly court in heaven, which was the reason why time was started in Genesis 1:5), were guaranteed God’s mercy, because they were all forced into being tempted by the devil by the devil’s cry for justice from God (Revelation 12:10).
This mercy of God to the humans for being unfairly targeted by the devil, was the reason why, when Eve disobeyed God’s command and activated evil on the earth, God mercifully retooled the humans, to not instantly die as Lucifer and the fallen angels had instantly died and were voided of all Grave to become ghosts of their decorated selves before they sinned.
In the period from the conception of Cain, through Abel, to Seth, God worked sinful nature into mankind, and chose to reach the point of stability at the time Seth was conceived. God then put it into the hearts of all human beings to seek God for their individual salvations (Genesis 5:3).
When it became clear to the heavenly hosts that the devil was digging himself deeper into sin by coercing human beings into sinning, instead of producing evidence that shows that human beings, on their own, were seeking to sin, God sacrificed His only begotten son on the cross at Calvary, to increase the absorption and assimilation thresholds of Grace for each human being who puts their faith in that sacrifice, and in the power of God. Anyone who chooses to obey God’s commands has demonstrated their love for God and His Christ.
And only those who successfully suppress their urge to misuse the freedom (freewill) they were given by God; submit to the commands of God (John 14:23-24), and gain true knowledge and understanding, which brings salvation—Proverbs 3:32 NIV—“For the Lord detests the perverse but takes the upright into his confidence.”