Mormons and anyone please....I need your help with this question...of WHY???

Question

If god can cause a great flood, then how could he just stand by and watch the nazi regime commit genocide on the Jews? Millions of jews died horrible deaths. Why did he not stop that. Maybe he sent Hitler ( Joshua) and his army to kill the Jews(Jericho) for not accepting his son as the mesiah. Who knows?

I thank everyone for their answers...this is a question from a friend...I am trying to gather as much info as I can from all of your perspectives and then pick out truth from your answers to give the best answer to my friend...again Thank you.

Answer 1

I don't want to sound casual or flippant about this. I have experienced the deaths of members of my family, including my Father. I have seen what injustice can do to individuals and to cultures. There is a lot of suffering in the world and there are many people who die or are killed seemingly for no reason.

But the thing that separates those of us who worship God from those of us who don't is the conviction that this life, with all its inequities and travesties is not the End. This life is not an answer unto itself. God requires both Justice and Mercy from Humanity (Micah1:5) but He is the ultimate judge. The Bible tells us there will come a time when all human beings will answer for their deeds, when all wrongs will be addressed, and all crimes punished.

When we connect with God we come into contact with His perspective, which is Eternal, and lifts us out of our circumstances where everything can seem so arbitrary or pointless. If you worship God then you are connected to Eternity. Eternity trumps History. The people who die here, good and bad, do not end here. We will all stand before God one day, and it will all be worked out, once and for all.

Answer 2

Hi,

Just a point on your final statement. No one who believes in God knows why He interacts in the affairs of this world or why he doesn't. One thing I don't believe though, is that the Nazi tragedy happened to the Jews was because God was "smiting" them through Hitler. Now Hitler himself might have used that as an excuse to rally the people against them, but from a practical standpoint if you're sending a message why send it 1900 years later.

Much evil takes place in the world. God could intervene presumably but chooses not to. Honest answer, I don't know why. It doesn't necessarily become the dichotomy of he lacks power or love--we just simply don't know why.

If you take another Bible story why allow Cain to kill Abel (to say I hear his (Abel's) blood calling out to me--we'll presumably he saw Cain beat him to death also)--we could get into allegory and other things here--but the point still holds...why?

You'll get different opinions (i.e., free will, final judgment, working all things evil included into good results, etc). Any of these I guess could be a reason, but there's a reason people have asked your question for thousands of years--no one truly knows, and so we will always on some level be asking Why?

I'm not sure if any of that helped your thought process.

Best,

Todd

Answer 3

During the time of Noah, all his family had faith in God, some more than others (Ham). God lamented about the wickedness and hardheartedness and the lack of belief that permiated the rest of the known world. The great flood was like starting over in a sense with eight individuals repopulating the earth.

Hitler proclaimed that his regime would last a thousand years. He was short by 988 years. His murderous was did not just inflict the Jews, though they took the largest blunt of his wrath. Gypsies, Slavs, Poles, Russians, JWs, some other Christians who did not follow him, political dissidents, and others. There were some 11 to 12 million deaths that occurred in the work and death camps built in various places of the Nazi controlled countries in Europe. God saw what was happening and through his inspiration allowed the U.S. to intervene at the right time. He also allowed soldiers to discover the horrible conditions that was Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Dachau, just to name a few. Now it is against German law to even display the Nazi swastika anywhere.

Answer 4

The actions of men are done by men. Acts of war are those kinds of things. Actions of Nature are caused by nature--whether we understand those actions or not. Floods are that type of action.
In ancient times, people attributed every event that they could not understand to the actions of God. Some people who are alive today still have that ancient mindset.
God does not cause tsunamis. Nature does. The human interference with nature sometimes contributes to "natural disasters" in ways we don't completely understand.
God had nothing to do with 9/11. Terrorism did.
Insurance companies include an "Acts of God" clause in many policies, saying that certain things are to be blamed on God.
I disagree.
But your question remains and your only real answer will be found when you ask yourself--and not anyone else--what you think God is.
I hope that you will think of God as something good, not as something that destroys. But your mind is your own.

Answer 5

I don't think God stood idly by. He gave people opportunities to intervene prior to it becoming the horror that was. I think many nations were slow to take a stand for righteousness and let the evil occur. Let me explain...

I think the world just got too complacent, and just stopped thinking about the horror of sin. We forgot that evil does exist in the hearts of man and that we need to intervene to stop it.

I know a couple older men that were with the first troops that discovered what had happened at the death camps. They said that you could literally feel the presence of Satan. They said there is no feeling to describe that evil. Many stood by as th evil which could be felt unfolded: the Germans, most of Europe, the US, the whole world....

Why didn't we (the nations) get involved sooner? We were asked to but refused because we thought it was "someone else's problem". We knew that Jews were being persecuted, we even turned away ships of refugees that came to the USA. We didn't stop the evil when it began and it grew and became horrific beyond imagination.

Don't forget the common quote (I forgot whose) that says "all it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing". We should stand up against evil as soon as we see it occur. WW2 should teach us that as nations we need to take a stand against evil. When you stop taking a stand against evil atrocities will occur.

Sadly we (the nations) still haven't learned the lessons. This type of evil continues. Think of Dafur, abortion, ect... We need to OBEY God and stand against evil where ever and whenever it occurs.

Answer 6

You can ask this question about every terrible thing that has ever happened, really. Why did God not stop this or that.

There is a time coming when God will do exactly that; the bible says His spirit will not "always strive with men". Right now God is allowing people to discover they are sinners, repent of that sin, and accept His son as savior. When Jesus comes to rule and reign, when God's judgment begins, the time and opportunity to be saved will be at an end.

Things will not always be as they are now. One day, the crooked will be made straight.

Answer 7

Firstly, what do the Mormons, specifically have to do with this?
Secondly God, in the form of God, has no legs, so he can't stand.
Thirdly, IdenytheholocaustIlovestalinandwanthisbabies... Or not.

It's interesting that you'd isolate that one incident, but as I understand it, Stalin killed more Jews than Hitler, just he was smart (yes you can still be smart if when you're evil) enough not to do it publicly.
You can also ask why did he sit back and watch the planes crash into the twin towers, why anything bad. Why does he let any evil exist in this world.
I guess you could say that since man's fall of grace from God this stopped being God's world... Indeed you could say that this has always been our world since God charged us with looking after it. Perhaps you could say it's Satan's world. Since Man allowed himself to be tempted, Satan has been pulling the strings. Basically, what I'm saying is, perhaps God views it as our problem and we ought to solve it. Of course if we do need a bit of help from Good old Jehova he may be willing to lend a spiritual hand from time to time.

Answer 8

Death will not stop on earth until the appointed time...and this is because the curse of sin was unleashed upon all of us when adam and eve disobeyed God. The wages of sin are death he did not specify by the droves or one baby regaurdles of the how and by whose hand. God is devine he can see the end from the beginning and it is ok to want to know why these things happen and the simplest answer iS BECAUSE OF THE CURSE OF SIN. But thank God deaths power is only for the flesh for those who have accepted Christ Jesus Amen!

Answer 9

Well, the old Deist answer is explaining God as a clockmaker. He created the universe as a clockmaker makes a clock. When he finishes, he sets the clock/universe in motion and creates it so that it can operate without his intercession.

As for those who say Jews were responsible for Christ's death and so it legitimizes centuries of oppression and the Holocaust, I would hazard to warn them that the activities of Christians in the past might very well justify such long and bloody oppression of them without regard. Shouldn't Italians be eternally punished, too, since they actually carried out the execution of Christ? It is an immoral and deeply repulsive line of thought.

Answer 10

I am ex-mormon by the way and saved now,
Revelation 7:17
For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
Revelation 21:4
He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
The way interpret this scripture is that he will wipe away our tears and our pain as if it never happened. Or we will be so happy to be in his presence, it won't matter if we were sexually abused or raped or tortured and killed, we will be forever happy so what does it matter what happen since our life on the earth was but a moment and then its gone.