Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no more. (Nahum 1:12)
There is no limit to affliction. God sends it, and God removes it. Do you sigh and say, “When will the end be?” Remember that our griefs will surely and finally end when this poor earthly life is over. Let us quietly wait and patiently endure the will of the Lord until He comes.”
Meanwhile, our Father in Heaven takes away the rod when His design in using it is fully served. When He has whipped away our folly, there will be no more strokes. Or, if the affliction is sent for testing us that our graces may glorify God, it will end when the Lord has made us bear witness to His praise. We should not wish the affliction to depart until God has gotten out of us all of the honor which we can possibly yield to Him. There may today be “a great calm.” Who knows how soon those raging billows of foam atop swells and wind waves will give place to a sea of glass, and the sea birds sit on the gentle waves? After long tribulation, the harvesting tools are returned to their shed, and the wheat rests in the barn. We may, before many hours are past, be just as happy as now we ae sorrowful. It is not hard for the Lord to turn night into day. He that sends the clouds can as easily clear the skies. Let us be of good cheer. It is better in our future. Let us sing hallelujah by anticipation.
Comment: Everyone passes through some difficulty, some sort of lessons. We endure and assume we are learning something, or paying for our past sins as we carry on.
To us this is mysterious. Why does He put us through these difficult days? Or… Why is Satan or his demon afflicting me?
Consider it a reminder in your future. You will go to God but there will be yet 1,000 years when Earth must be cleaned up after the waste and ravages of ended wars. During that 1,000 years teaching and preaching. In that same 1,000 years raising families on earth again and getting engrained into our very spirit that we must follow God’s Way, not our own. And then will come the final ending.
They who loved God and followed His Way to the end are welcomed into a new plain of existence, a parallel universe where there are new satisfactions, and new challenges ever growing to become more like The Lord our God. The old Earth will be replaced with a clean, perfect new one, and what we knew in a physical rhelm will be for us replaced with something much better.
All of this is intended to help us grow and be self controlled, morally upright, sober, proper, and following His Righteous Way.
Do not tell yourself you will not participate in this plan, and follow a different philosophy or theosophy. We have no choice. We will participate or go to Outer Darkness, there to the second death and be forever after as if we had never been.
We are being made to be one of HIS beloved children and part of his Family forevermore. This is the greatest reward, this is the paradise toward which we journey.
Nothing of which you can conceive can be better than what he has planned for us. The small minded secretly say to a friend, “But there will be no sex.” That is much later. There will be more and better ways to express our love toward one another, and the pains and disappointments of the past will be no more. There will be ways to have what we want and need if these desires fit into God’s will, and together we will develop the paradisical existance which is promised to us in various church doctrines.
Better Further On, is coming, and you are wise to stay on the path God has molded for you. Turning to blaze another trail can only bring you to more trouble and sorrow. Don’t do that. Follow God’s Righteous Way.
