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Why do bad things happen to 'good' people?

...point to Job. If you don't know the story of Job, basically in a nutshell, he was a good, God-fearing man and then Satan challenges God by saying, "stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face" and then lots of really bad things happened to him (like his house collapsing and killing his family etc.) - you can read about all the sudden calamities in Job 1. But at the end of the first chapter describing all the bad things happening, verse 22 simply says, "In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing." Though there is debate about whether Job is a historical account, or simply an allegorical story to try...

Lent Day 23: Athanasius: Life of Anthony: Chaps. 21-30

...story of Job, Anthony poses the hypothetical question: “if the devil is so weak, how come Job was overcome with calamity?”, to which he responds by reminding us that despite the devil bringing lots of suffering, illness and sometimes death, to Job or his family and livestock, none of it was possible without permission from God. “The devil was not the strong man”, he points out, because it was God who let Job be tried to test his faith; “certainly he had no power to do anything” other than what was permitted. This, he says, is exactly what proves that the devil is weak because although Satan was willing, “he could not prevail against one just man...

Jesus, Yahweh, And The Power Over The Storm

.... And in Job 9:8, we read: who alone stretched out the heavensand trampled the waves of the Sea. These verses reinforce the image of Yahweh as the one who commands and calms the sea, highlighting His supreme power over creation. Jesus Calms the Storm: Mark 4:35–41 The New Testament echoes this divine power in the person of Jesus Christ. Mark 4:35–41 narrates an event that is reminiscent of Psalm 107 to anyone familiar: On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and th...

It’s Not Your Job To Convert Anyone

...On Sunday it was St Andrew’s Day and I was in church listening to a sermon about Andrew (and the namesake of our church), that often overlooked disciple, meeting Jesus for the first time. In John’s Gospel, it says: John 1:40–42One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’… He brought Simon to Jesus. As I sat there listening to our vicar speak about evangelism and how we should be more like Andrew in bringing people to meet Jesus, something from many, many years ago flickered to life in the back of my mind. A realisation I had lo...

Was there death before the Fall?

...m 115:17; Job 14:10-12; Job 3:11-19). The fall depicted in the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo With that in mind, the threat of death by God makes more sense since Adam and Eve would actually be able to comprehend such a concept if it was already a reality. They obviously appear to have been created with unlearned knowledge since they can speak and talk about things (either that, or Gen 2 skips a bunch of narrative of them growing up and learning everything), so if physical death didn't exist until they sinned, what good would it be to say "you will die" in Genesis 2:16-17? The trick of the serpent was to convince Eve that she wouldn't die by eating...

What are the Seraphim, and was the devil one of them?

...a name in Job 1:6 (The Adversary if translated). So what does seraphim mean if it were translated? Basically “fiery serpents”! The Hebrew word has obscure etymological roots related to burning (literally), which is likely why translators choose to transliterate rather than translate it. We also find similar connections to fire in other parts of Scripture where the heavenly host are mentioned or described; see Ps 104:4 and Ezk 1:13-14 for two examples where God's ministers are "fire and flame", and the living beings move "like a flash of lightning" with fire moving between them. There are some links with the root word to Babylonian fire-gods and also in E...