Daniel's prophecies are the most precisely verifiable in Scripture. And Daniel's seventieth week — the final seven years — is the most detailed prophetic period in the Bible. This supplement works through the prophetic timeline so you can locate yourself in it and understand what's coming.

Many modern preachers teach that God is the one responsible for original sin and for the sufferings of His children — that He actually appoints and calls people to suffer and even determines their suffering and how far it will go. This theory completely ignores all the satanic opposition and the conditions caused by the willful rebellion of man and the Fall. It places all the blame for these miserable conditions upon God and reasons that since they exist, they must be God's will — and that Christians should accept these things as "blessings in disguise."

The Bible does not teach any of the above theories. Such teaching impeaches the character of God and makes Him the most unjust, heartless, and despotic Being in the universe. The arguments used by these modern teachers to prove such fallacies are given and refuted in the points below.

Suffering May Arise From Doing Good

This is no doubt true in the case of Christ and many others whose purpose in life was to do good. Because of holy living and preaching truth that condemned the lives of people around them, they had to undergo much suffering. But such suffering was not caused by God — it was caused by evil men and demons.

Neither was such suffering that of physical sickness, sin, and failure in life. Some of them had to go without material needs at times because Christianity was a new religion and had to become established in the world. However, today, since it is the prevailing religion of our country, there is no need for Christians to suffer for lack of material needs and undergo persecutions like some of the founders of Christianity did.

Therefore, such an argument — that suffering may result from doing good — does not prove that God wills and sends sin, sickness, poverty, and failure to Christians in order to keep them humble and godly.

If there is ever again persecution of Christians similar to what early believers endured, it will be necessary to suffer hardships, poverty, beatings, stonings, killings, and many other things people naturally suffer in such times. But even then, it will not be necessary for Christians to suffer sin, sickness, and failure in attaining the benefits of the gospel that belong to them under all circumstances.

Bible Characters Furnish No Excuse to Fail God

The cases of Paul, Timothy, and Epaphroditus are given by some men today to prove that all Christians must suffer. It is true all must suffer some trials, but this does not mean Christians must suffer sickness, sin, and poverty, as we have seen in Lesson Fourteen, Point VIII, 6-9.

There is no statement in Scripture that Paul had sore eyes or some disease of the body. He was beaten with rods, stoned to death, and suffered many physical sufferings at the hands of mobs — and to these infirmities he does refer 2 Corinthians 11:23-312 Corinthians 12:7-9. But he has never even hinted in one passage that he bore sicknesses in his own body that Christ died to heal him of.

No other case is given in Scripture where a man was in the total will of God and yet was constantly sick because of God's will. All sicknesses, sins, and failures to get what the gospel provides are not the work of God. All such is the work of the devil and the failure of man to cooperate with God and have faith for the benefits of the Gospel.