If so many people are praying for peace in the Middle East, what prevents God from granting this?

Question

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If you state it is evil men, then is God so weak that He can be thwarted by a few thousand men?

If you state free will, then why is prayer useful at all, other than delude believers that they are doing something?

If you state our time is not God's time, wasn't the prayer offered to God from OUR time perspective? Isn't God capable of understanding the human time perspective?

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Answer 1

I think the fact that there is no god.

Answer 2

Part of it is God's timing: Ecclesiastes 3 says, "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: ...a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace."

Part of it is the depravity of humans: God cannot be thwarted by evil men; after all, He was, and is, and ever shall be, so He cannot be defeated. However (and this goes to our free will), God does not control us. What would be the point of giving us the ability to do what we want if God would always decide to just override our choices?

Prayer is an incredibly useful tool - it is the primary way to develop a relationship with God, as you can't have a relationship with *anyone* without some sort of communication with them. But people often think of prayer as though God is a magic genie and He will grant us anything we want; nowhere in the Bible is prayer portrayed in this way. When Jesus taught on prayer (Matthew 6:5-13), some of the things he said we should be praying about include: praising God, praying for others, and praying for our own needs (not our wants).

Naturally, it would seem that "world peace" would fall into the category of praying for others. But what exactly is it that people are praying? Simply that the fighting will stop and everyone will all of a sudden like everyone else? Or is it something deeper, that people are praying for the wisdom of specific leaders involved, that God will send someone or something to make them see that there is a better way to resolve disagreements than war? Are people praying for the safety of specific soldiers, that God would protect them from harm and give them wisdom and discernment in situations; are people praying for civilians in specific countries and towns, that they would be protected and have the courage and perseverence and peace to go through a war?

And if you think prayer is a "delusion," look up George Müller's story and tell me if you think all of that was simply lies or coincidences.

Finally, on the issue of God's time: True, the prayers are offered from our time perspective (and God is capable of understanding our perspective), but the difference between our time and God's time is that God is eternal. He has no beginning and no end, so He is able to see everything that has ever happened, as well as everything that will happen; while humans *may* be capable of learning everything that has happened in the past, we have no way of learning anything that will happen in the future. Because of this, God may see a situation in our time that seems bad to us, but He can also see what the situation may cause in our future. God can bless a bad situation and turn it into something good (which is not to say that a bad situation IS a good situation).

As an example (and I realize that this analogy is not even close to being on par with war), think of someone who has missed a flight due to blowing a tire on the way to the airport, or losing their keys, or getting stuck in traffic; later, the airplane they were supposed to be on crashes. Obviously, getting a flat tire is a bad thing, but God can turn it into a good thing. We don't know what will happen in the future, but God does, and we just have to have a little faith in Him.

Answer 3

n the name of Allaah Most Benefit Most Merciful
All praise be to Allaah the Lord of all worlds
May Allaah's peace and blessing be upon His prophet, his family and companions

First we should state that Allah/God swt is the All-knowing, and that He swt is Absolute by His justicetj(on this should you take care most!!!). So, what ever happens is His will, and we have to obey it. Therefore it's not very clever to ask WHY Allah/Allah did or does or is doing to do this or that...We can only speak avout wisdoms. In this concrete case, maybe Allah wants to punish someone, He swt may want to temptate His swt good slaves, maybe He swt wants to prepare the people for soemthing that is even worse. A child thinks that an injection is nothing but a pain, and at that age can't impossibly figure out how can something so painful be useful at all. But, we know that that injectiion maybe saved the child's life...

The logic you used is typically athiestic, but that are only sophysm.

And Allah knows best!

And all praise be to Allaah the Lord of all worlds
And may Allaah’s blessing be upon His prophet Muhammad, his family and companions

Answer 4

Sounds like the Atheist "Problem of Evil" 'logic' argument against God. The 'logical' argument says that you can believe in any 2 of these 3 and be logical, but to believe all 3 makes you illogical.

1. If God is omnipotent, then He can prevent evil.
2. If God is omnibenevolent, then He will prevent evil.
3. Evil does happen.

Well, we know that God is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent, and yet evil happens. So what is the solution to said problem? Well, here it goes.

God is omnibenevolent, but it does not change his character when evil happens, because it happens outside of Him. He could stop it, but it does not logically follow that He will always prevent it from happening. Those of us who believe understand that God has divine foreknowledge, so even before he created everything He knew that Adam and Eve would sin. So it does not logically follow that because he is All Good that he will prevent all evil.

The logical conclusion then is this, and all 3 you can believe and still be logical.

1. God is omnipotent, so He can prevent all evil.
2. God is omnibenevolent, so He has a good reason for evil to happen.
3. Evil does Happen.

Take it as you will, but that is the logical conclusion. So God has a good reason for Evil to happen in the Middle East, and that is why it happens, even though people pray that it won't. God promises to answer our prayers, but He doesn't promise to answer them in the way in which we want Him to.

Answer 5

It's not up to us to grant them peace or pray for peace to be granted. It's really up to the Middle Easterners to be like, "okay we have a history and legacy of fighting for centuries, do we really want to go down like this?". Believe or not, much of the Middle East is a civilized place, probably more so than America in some ways.

And I'm not going to believe some religious zealot who says, "it's in the bible, the Middle East will never have peace." Because I have faith that places like Iraq and Iran will someday see the light and allow their citizens to live peacefully and become allies with America and the rest of the world.

Answer 6

No, God has a better plan than we can imagine, He may be setting up the end of the world so his fulfillment of the scriptures will come to pass. Which is to say the church will be ruptured and the rest of the non believers will be stuck in eternal hell. He is God after all, why would he need to do anything other than what He wants to do, because you asked? Yea right, that's a motivating factor!. Funny how people get cocky now and think they can outsmart their creator when they can't even master the life you have.

Answer 7

Peace is not merely the lack of war, it begins when all recognize the One True God. As is apparent in the Middle East, the majority of the population there does not recognize the One True God...and it is this choice of recognition the is the core of free will. As the nearly half-billion people there continue to recognize a false god, there can be no peace as there cannot be any common purpose.

Answer 8

I think it is that God has his own plan for the way he wants his world to work and if he wants people fighting in the middle east then they will -- remember that there has been war in the middle east for thousands of years all based on religion so God may want to see the outcome of the people it may not be his right to interfere with the belief structure of men or he may be testing mens belief structure.

Answer 9

i like rotten lime ninjas answer, in spite of if there are lots of clever human beings interior the middle east, if it werent for oil, we right here interior the west couldnt care much less with regard to the area. i'm confident as technologies advances, and we modify into much less based on in spite of they might desire to furnish, they are going to be a footnote in history

Answer 10

It has become clear that the earth is a great form of entertainment for the Lord. Why else would he allow Eve to eat the fruit and condemn millions?

He must allow wars to continue so that he has something interesting to watch. Apparently he is an action entertainment kinda guy. It is also obvious that he doesn't like shows with a sexual theme, as scene in his book. But he allows it anyway

Answer 11

He's working on it. But the current conflict might well be part of the Last Days Events, in which case the end result will indeed be 1000 years of peace under the lordship of Jesus. Are you sure YOU want this to happen sooner rather than later?