If "God" has/had the ability to defeat "evil", why wasn't this done right at the beginning?

Question

Why thousands of years of "evil"?

Answer 1

I may have just read the greatest pile of christian defensive dung ever assembled in one place.

God-believers.... Are you taking time to read what your fellows are saying? Don't they offer some of the waekest and least reasonable BS you've ever encountered? Well guess what... you all, each of you, are doing the same thing. You are creating lies and offering them as truth. It's wrong and you ought to know that by now.

Get real.

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Answer 2

Ezekiel 33:11 -- Say to them: 'As I live,' says the Lord God, 'I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. . . .'

2 Peter 3:9 -- The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

When was the beginning? In 1 John 1, the Bible speaks of the beginning as far as God has existed -- which, of course, is forever, eternity. In Genesis 1:1, it speaks of the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth -- which came after the angels were created. Jesus said that the Devil was a murderer "from the beginning" (John 8:44); who did he murder? And yet, God said that the Devil/Satan, who was originally called Lucifer, was perfect from the beginning of his creation (Ezekiel 28:15).

In an eternal time-line, what can be called the beginning? God has begun many projects: the creation of angels, the creation of the universe, the recreation of the earth, his plan for reproducing himself, the salvation of mankind, etc. . . . All these had beginnings. But when was the beginning of Lucifer's rebellion?

Are you suggesting that God should have destroyed Lucifer the instant he made a mistake? Is that how you would like God to deal with you?

Mercy and patience go hand-in-hand with God's justice. And he exercises it toward all, not just mankind; and not just for a period of time, but forever.

Answer 3

God has the ability to defeat the evil and He will too.Then we do not have our free will. The free will opens the door to the evil, so if He ought to remove evil then you, us would be the first to go. Because as long as people will have the free will, we will have evil among us. He gave us our intellect, He wrote His Moral Law into our hearts...He did not just push us here with our own idea of what is right and what is wrong. Evil comes from our choices. : )

Our hearts desire is the perfect place where there is no evil, everything is in the perfect harmony. Heaven is that place, and then we do not have our free will anymore. That is why it is so important to chose God here. Our free will ends here. : )

Answer 4

God would have had to create the world without free will for there to be no possibility of evil, but then there would have been no possibility of love either. A "free" will that could do only good and not evil would be self-contradictory. To defeat evil at the beginning would have meant that no more free willed people could have been created in this universe.

Answer 5

Great question. Here's my take on it. As you may know, Lucifer convinced 1/3 of the angels to join him in his rebellion against God. Man through original sin joined Lucifer in that rebellion. If God had wiped out all who rebelled what would those who did not join in the rebellion have thought. God must allow evil to mature into what it really is before He destroys it. Look around at this world and the evil in it and you will see the result of rebellion against God and when He does finally destroy it there will be no question as to why He did.

Answer 6

God gave man and the angles the ability to choose between doing what God wants or doing their own thing.

God wanted us to love Him because He is good, not because He did not give us a choice.

Satan conspired against God, and convinced 1/3 of the angles to follow him.

Satan then got Adam and Eve to sin against God also.

But God has a plan to save people, and that was accomplished with the crucifixion of Jesus.

God is going to wait a little longer before it becomes to late for any one else to become saved.

Answer 7

Because God does not want to defeat evil incompletely. It must never happen again.

If God banished evil too soon, there would be a greater evil in its place--beings that He had created would no longer serve Him from love but from fear. God wants it to be perfectly clear in everyone's mind why sin must be destroyed. God hated it from the beginning, but His subjects have needed time to see exactly what it is before they could develop adequate hate for it too.

Answer 8

We can't question how free will and God's plan simultaneously work together...it is beyond us. It's all for His ultimate glory, and He has so much love for us that he has to keep showing it, whether we respond or not. But He needed us to understand how serious he is about both the love and the law. As long as there is the law, there is evil. Jesus came to complete the law, not over rule it. So until Jesus comes again and completes the effort, there will be evil.

Answer 9

God could have created us all as Angels with no free will and thus no evil. But man was given a gift of enormous magnitude and free will is required to know that gift. You can not have free will without choice.

God does not make evil happen, man does, through his own choices.

Answer 10

There must needs be opposition in all things else we would not have agency in this life nor be able to learn right from wrong, good from evil. When God laid out His plans for His children before the earth was organized, it included the ability to choose for ourselves, to exercise our agency, to learn by our mistakes the difference between good and evil. Lucifer offered to bring all of God's children home that not one soul would be lost. That idea was rejected and Lucifer rebelled. He was cast out of heaven along with 1/3 of God's children to become the devil and his angels to aflict and torment man with all manner of temptations, faleshoods and evil.
If it were not so, then coming to earth would be like taking a test with the answer sheet in front of us. Where is the growth in that? We would not gain anything. In order for us to grow and become like our Father in Heaven, we need to learn by our choices and experiences, thus there must needs be opposition in all things, for us to exercise our agency and live by faith.

Answer 11

Because evil serves a function in the development of believers.

People need to see and understand the results of not living for God and following Him.

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