by A.P. Adams

There is probably no subject in all the range of religious thought so hard to deal with as that of the purpose of evil. Writers on biblical lore have tried to account of the originof evil; but it seems to me that the real difficulty is the bare fact of its existence,whatever may have been its origin.

The great question for theologians to wrestle with is this: How can you account for the existence of evil alongside a supreme, all-wise, holy and benevolent God?

Think for a moment on the condition of things in this world. Evil exists on the earth to embitter and darken, to blight and curse everything else that exists on the earth. On it goes, like a huge Juggernaut car, rolling through the world, crushing its helpless victims on
every hand, and (the saddest feature of all) crushing without distinction the innocent and guilty together in one common quagmire of sin, suffering and death; and God allows it to
go on when he might at any instant stop it, and on it has gone for six thousand years. Take an example in the concrete – the horrible September massacre of the French Revolution when during a period of one hundred hours, from Sunday afternoon, Sept. 2, 1792, until
Thursday, the helpless inmates of the seven crowded prisons of Paris were, after a mock trial before a self-constituted tribunal, hurled to a howling mob of human wolves and fiends and butchered  in cold blood. Men and women, young, middle-aged, and gray-haired,
shared the same fate, and for no other crime than that, as Carlisle expresses it, they were “suspected of being suspected.” And all this was enacted under the canopy of
heaven where sits the God of infinite power and love! How can we believe it? Add to this the years of horror of that same revolution. Add the slaughter of the Waldenses and the Albegenses.

Add the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Add the unspeakable cruelties of the Spanish Inquisition. Add the decades, centuries and millenniums of butchery and blood that have cursed the world from fratricidal Cain down to the present time, and then try to
reconcile all this with the existence in the same universe of a God of infinite power and love! Can you do it? Rather does not the contemplation of this vast sea of human suffering cause one to shrink back with horror from the ghastly vision and almost (and sometimes quite) doubt that there is a God? Alas, how many there are that are troubled by this problem! Can you help them? The Word can help them!

First let me say that there is no help out of this trouble in orthodoxy. In regard to
this subject orthodoxy is hopelessly contradictory and utterly absurd. Thus it speaks: “It was not in God’s original plan that evil should exist, but evil has come into existence and done incalculable harm; yet God’s plans cannot be thwarted nor disarranged in the least, because he is all-wise and almighty. Evil being in existence before man was created, God allows it to come into contact with the man He created when He might have prevented it, knowing full well what the result would be; yet He is in no wise responsible for the consequences of evil. In fact, it is blasphemy to entertain any such idea. Evil having come into
existence contrary to God’s will, he cannot put it out of existence, but it will continue as long as he exists, an eternal blot on His otherwise perfect universe and a perpetual offense unto all the purified; yet His will is absolute and sovereign and the redeemed will be perfectly happy. Thus, God is in no wise responsible for either the origin, existence, consequences or
continuance of evil; yet He can have everything as He pleases, and is the Creator of all things.” And so Orthodoxy goes on,stultifying common sense, throttling human reason, and stupidly expecting that intelligent, thoughtful men and
women will accept its idiotic patter as the infallible utterances of divine inspiration. Cannot everyone see that the entire orthodox view is contradictory and absurd in the extreme, and hence self-destructive and untenable?

Now I hold that the following proposition is self-evident. Given a God of infinite power, wisdom and goodness, He is responsible for ALL things that exist. And
this also follows from the wisdom and goodness of God: All things that exist are for an intelligent and benevolent end. These conclusions are inevitable from the premises; they cannot be modified except by modifying the premises. For instance, if you
say that some things exist contrary to God’s will, then it follows that God is not all-powerful; and you cannot escape this conclusion by bringing in the orthodox doctrine of man’s free moral agency, for whatever a free moral agent may do, He is responsible for it who made him a free moral agent. If God made man a free moral agent, He knew beforehand what the result would be, and hence is just as responsible for the consequences of the acts of that free moral agent as He would be for the act of an irresponsible machine that He had made.

Man’s free moral agency, even if it were true, would by no means clear God from the
responsibility of His acts since God is His creator and has made him in the first place just what he is, well knowing what the result would be. If God’s will is EVER thwarted, then He is not almighty. If His will is thwarted, then His plans must be changed, and hence He is not all-wise and immutable. If His will is NEVER thwarted, then all things are in  ACCORDANCE with His will and He is responsible for all things as they exist.

If He is all-wise and all-good, then all things, existing according to His will, must be tending to some wise and benevolent end. Thus we come back to my proposition again: If God is infinite in power, wisdom and goodness, then He is responsible for ALL things that exist, and all existing things are tending toward some wise and good end. He who cannot see that this proposition is absolutely inevitable – as much so as a mathematical axiom – must be very deficient in logic and reason, and it would be useless to argue with him. He who DOES see the truth of this proposition will also see the truth of several
corollaries depending upon it; viz., ABSOLUTE evil cannot exist because God is absolutely GOOD. The absolute is the unconditioned and unlimited. If there were absolute evil, then the good WOULD be limited, and hence NOT absolute, and hence again God would not be absolutely or infinitely good. But God IS infinite in goodness; hence evil is NOT infinite.
Therefore it is relative, temporary and limited, and therefore again ENDLESS evil is an impossibility unless you make God less than infinite. Thus it is seen that the doctrine of endless torments is as contrary to reason as it is to scripture.

We have arrived then purely by reasoning to the somewhat startling and yet perfectly
scripture conclusion that “all things are of God,” (Eccl. 11:5) or God is in all things, or is responsible for all things, including all so called EVIL things as well as good things. Is not such a position as this very dangerous? Is it not a fearful thing to say that evil is of God? I answer there is nothing dangerous or fearful about this view unless the TRUTH is dangerous and fearful. We have seen that reason compels us to this position whether we will or no, and everyone familiar with the Bible ought to know that this view is positively scriptural. That “all things are of God” is declared over and over again in the bible. The prophet Amos goes so far as to particularize evil as ”of God” when in his question he makes an implied statement which from an orthodox standpoint would be blasphemous: “Shall
there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?” (Amos 3:6). But what is
still more to the purpose we have the direct positive statement that GOD CREATES EVIL!

“I form light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things.” (Is. 45:7). This passage is most strange and unaccountable on the ground of any of the current orthodox creeds. God creates evil! It cannot be! But here it is in the word. What will you do with it? “We must explain it somehow,” says Orthodoxy, “and yet save our creed. How shall it be done? Suppose we say that the evil here spoken of is not moral evil, sin, or wrongdoing, but physical evil, famines, pestilences, tornadoes, etc., which God controls and sends upon
mankind as punishment for their wickedness.” It will not do! The word here rendered evil is the one commonly used throughout the Old Testament to denote wickedness, sin, wrongdoing .

In some five hundred passages it is so used. For example, see (Gen. 6:5; Num.
14:27; Deut. 31:29; I Kings 11:6; 16:30; Psa. 34:21). The very same word in the original is also rendered “wicked” and“wickedness” more than a hundred times. (See for
example Gen. 6:5; 13:13; Psa. 94:23; 101:4).

Suppose that instead of trying to explain this passage in harmony with some cut-and-dried creed, we let all creeds go and see if we can find out what the passage really means, and then, if the creed does not harmonize with that meaning, throw the creed away and form a another one that will harmonize with it. At any rate here is the statement in the word and we will be brave enough to receive it as truth and trust the same One who made it to explain it. Since God is infinitely good and wise and evil is one of His creatures, it must be that evil shall ultimate in some good and wise end, as we have already seen. But how can
that be? And, if we can by any means understand how it can be, the next question would be what can it be? What can be the end, good and wise, toward which evil is tending?

We can understand how all evil tends to good from the fact that we know from our own
experience how some evil tends to good, and in the Bible and in the world around us, we see the same thing illustrated again and again. Now if God has done this in some cases, and if, as we know, He worketh all things after the counsel of His own will (Eph. 1:11), then it
surely is not difficult to believe that He overrules all evil for good. In fact, this must be so, for it is only on this ground, i.e., that all evil tends to be good in the end, that we can
harmonize the existence of evil at all with the existence of a God of infinite power, wisdom and love. It is not necessary for us to understand how in each particular case evil is overruled for good in order to believe that it is so overruled. The subject is made
still clearer, moreover, from the fact that we can see and understand what some of these good ends are toward which evil conducts us, and thus we come to know something of the purpose of evil. We see furthermore that this purpose is grand and glorious and and in perfect harmony with the character of God and that it fully accounts for the existence of evil.

How could God ever reveal Himself to man in His mercy, long-suffering, and compassion
if it had not been that evil had put us into a position to call for the exercise of these attributes in our behalf? And especially how could God manifest to us His love in all its
intensity and greatness except by such an opportunity as evil furnishes? As it is written, “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because God sent His only Son into the world that we might live through Him,” (I Jn. 4:9) and
there could have been no such manifestation of the Father’s love if there had been no such thing as evil. We might believe that a friend loved us even though his love had never been especially tested, but we never could appreciate his love unless circumstances transpired to give him an opportunity to exhibit it in all its strength and fulness. So, too, we never could understand fully the love of God (and hence never could know Him
fully – I Cor. 13:12 – for God is love) had it not been for our lost and wretched condition furnishing the Father with an adequate opportunity for its manifestation. It was “when we were yet without strength” that Christ died for us. “God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” (Rom.
5:6). It was because we were in such an evil case, without strength and sinners, that
the love that sent the deliverer is so marked and readily appreciated. Hence “hereby perceive we the love of God because Christ laid down His life for us.” How should we have been able thus to perceive that love in its so great plenitude if we had never come under the power of evil so as to need this extreme manifestation of it?

Furthermore, as evil
gives God an occasion to reveal himself to us so that we mayknow Him, so it gives us the opportunity to exercise
the attributes of God so that we may become like Him. The
existence of evil in the world gives the child of God the
opportunity for the exercise of the godlike attributes of mercy,
compassion, forgiveness, forbearance, meekness, and gentleness and
thus he becomes like God; for, if ye do these things, ye shall be
the children of the highest; for He maketh His sun to rise on the
evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the
unjust, and is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. (Matt. 5:45; Lk.
6:35). Thus we see
something of the purpose of evil in the blessings of
mankind.

In addition to all this
we have other direct testimony from scripture that evil is one of
God’s ministers for good. It is clearly intimated again and again
that God uses evil for the accomplishment of His plans, which,
of course, are always good. See, for instance, Judges
9:23. Read the
context and you will see that Abimelech by a most atrocious crime
had obtained the rulership of Israel, and to punish him, “God
sent an evil spirit between him and the men of
Schechem,”
and the result was the punishment of all the guilty parties. See
the same idea in I Sam.
16:14. “The
Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul and an
evil spirit from the Lord troubled him.”This evil
spirit did not come from the devil nor from hell, but from the
Lord to do his bidding. See also I
Kings 22:23 where
the Lord is represented as using a “lying spirit” in
order to deceive wicked Ahab for his own destruction.

The case of Job is one
of the most striking and perfect illustration so this wonderful
truth. The Lord speaks of him as “My servant Job – there is
none like in in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that
feareth God and escheweth evil.”
(Job. 1:9). Thus it
appears that Job was a remarkably good man, and this is confirmed
by Ezek. 14:14, 20. Now then, what does God do but deliberately
hand over this perfect and upright man into the hands of Satan to
do his worse upon him, only that he should not touch his life. How
could we have a more perfect illustration of how God uses evil as
an instrument for good? Although Job suffered intensely, we know
that in the end he was greatly blessed by his hard and bitter
experience. If God thus uses Satan, the embodiment of evil, as a
minister for good in the case of one individual, is it hard to
believe that all evil is overruled of God for good in all
cases?

The New Testament
teaches the same truth. Did you ever notice how strangely the
evangelists Matthew and Mark speak of Christ’s temptation? TheSpirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to betempted of the devil, and he was there with the wild
beasts. (Matt. 4:1; Mk.
1:12-13). What a
strange statement! The Holy Spirit of God drives the sinless Jesus
into the wilderness among the wild beasts to be tempted of Satan,
the arch enemy of all good, a murderer from the beginning, and the
father of lies! Truly God creates evil and uses it, too, for His
own purposes and glory! The apostle Paul fully understood this
great truth and practiced it himself. Hence he writes to the
Corinthians “to
deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh
that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord
Jesus,” (I Cor.
5:5) and he declares
in his letter to Timothy that he himself had delivered certain
ones unto Satan “that they might learn not to
blaspheme.” (I Tim.
1:20). It would seem
also that the apostle knew something of this kind of discipline
himself, for he says, “Lest I should be exalted above
measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given
me a thorn in the flesh,
the messenger of Satan to buffet
me,
lest I should be exalted above measure.” (II Cor.
12:7). All this
clearly proves that God overrules evil for good, that even Satan’s
work shall result in blessings for God’s children.

Finally, we will notice
one more passage more remarkable, if possible, even than those I
have cited. In the 20th chapter of the Revelation we have an
account of the total restraint of the devil and consequent
suppression of evil for a thousand years. What a blessed era of
peace and righteousness that will be and how desirable that it
should continue and that evil should never again curse the earth!
But, lo, wonderful to relate, at the end of the thousand years
Satan is loosed out of his prison, and again goes out to deceive
the nations, and peace is banished form the earth, and war and
slaughter ensues with terrible suffering and destruction.
According to the orthodox idea of the origin and final effects of
evil, there would seem to be some terrible mistake here. Either
Satan as not watched closely enough, or his prison was insecure,
or there was treachery; some awful blunder or more awful crime has
been committed to let the devil loose when once he was well
secured – surely it would seem from the orthodox standpoint. But
so it is not. All is plain when we see the great truth I have
tried to set forth in this article. Satan
is God’s servant to carry out His
plans. He is
just as much under God’s control and works; just as as truly under
His direction as is the angel Gabriel. God now leaves him free to
work out his mischievous will among the children of men. He is the“prince of this world,”
(Jn. 12:31; 14:30; 16:11)“the spirit that worketh in the children of
disobedience.” (Eph.
2:2) the time will
come when he will be bound and put under total restraint and so
remain through the Millennium. Then he will be loosed because God
has something more for him to do, and he will finally be disposed,
but we have seen that evil is needful and beneficial in the end.
It is one of God’s creatures and His servant, and is conducive to
the accomplishment of His gracious plans, as are all other
things.

Thus the Word untangles
this great mystery of evil for us and shows us clearly that it is
not an interloper in God’s economy. It is not a foreign substance
in the delicate fabric of God’s great plan, obstructing and
disarranging its intricate mechanism; nay, it is a necessarypart of that plan. It rightly belongs to the
marvelous congeries of forces that under the control and guidance
of the one supreme mind works and inter works steadily and without
interruption or delay to the glorious end of creating a divine and
godlike race. Thank God that on this, as in all other
things, He will be glorified and man, in the end, be
blessed!

Now, another thought.
There are some who say that they could accept the foregoing
position if it were not for one thing – the great injustice there
is in the world. They can see how God can overrule evil for good
in the case of the guilty. Those who deserve punishment are
benefited by it, but the evil of this world falls with equal
weight upon the innocent as upon the guilty, and even in many
cases with greater weight upon the former than upon the latter.
The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. The
innocent and helpless suffer most keenly on account of the
viciousness and brutality of others, and thus, the most outrageous
injustice is perpetrated continually around us in the world. How
can all this be permitted in the dominions of a God of absolute
justice and boundless love? And how can all this be conducive to
good? Is there an answer to this tremendous problem? Two
considerations, if I err not, will help us to a
solution.

We have seen thatone
of the purposes of evil is to develop in our characters attributes
akin to God: pity, mercy, compassion, charity,
gentleness, etc.
Now suppose we lived in a world of absolute justice where no one
suffered except what they strictly deserved to suffer, where the
innocent never suffered, but only the guilty, and they suffered
just so much – no more and no less – as was due to their
transgression and as would be beneficial to the transgressor.
Suppose we lived in such a world as that. At first thought it
would seem as though it would be a very nice kind of world; but
how could we in such a world develop the godlike attributes above
referred to? There would be no room for heavenly compassion and
sweet charity and pity in a world of absolute justice. We would
not be likely to pity very much a person who we knew was receiving
only the punishment due his fault and that in the end would be for
his benefit and blessing. Is it not plain that just thiskind of evil, i.e., the evil of injustice, is needed in
order that those crowning attributes of God, the tender and loving
qualities of our Father in heaven, may be developed and perfected
in His human children? Furthermore, so far as the injustice goes,that may be only temporary and apparent. Who shall say that
in future cycles which God’s plan has yet to run, all the
apparent injustice of this present time may not be perfectly
adjusted, taken into account, and made right? Surely no one has
any right to say it will not be so; and it is perfectly reasonable
and probably that it will be so.

But there is still
another consideration that fully confirms all the foregoing and
still further explains the whole subject. We should always
endeavor to discover the underlying principles of God’s
actions. Nothing that god does is arbitrary or capricious, but
every one of His movements has an adequate and righteous cause.He always acts from principle. The outward act may change
under different circumstances and toward different individuals,
but His principles of action never change. See this whole subject
set forth in Ezekiel, chapter forty-three. Hence, in order to
become acquainted with God, to know Him more and more, we must
endeavor to understand, not simply what God does, butwhy He does it. To know merely what God does is ofttimes
very puzzling and inexplicable. to know why He does it makes all
as clear and luminous as noon day. What we need to know,then, in order to know God are the reasons for God’s actions
– the purpose, “the end of the Lord,” (Jas.
5:11) the causes an
principles of His movements and operations in His dealings with
mankind. We may always be sure that there is a just and righteous
reason for all God’s ways and our endeavor should be to know and
understand that reason.

Now let us apply this to
the subject we are considering. Evil exists – thing thatseems utterly antagonistic to God and His way, but which we
are sure from the foregoing considerations to be in some
sense of God, in harmony with His will, and conducive to the
furtherance of His plans. Now then, is there any principleof action, just and righteous in itself, that will account for
the existence of evil and indicate its ultimate result? There
certainly is such a principle, thus: It is a recognized principle
in law, equity and morals that it is right and just to inflict or
permit temporary evil for the sake of an ultimate and permanent
good. This principle, all will see is certainly correct. It is
upon this principle that all punishment of any kind is
justifiable, and it is only on this principle that it can be
justified. Punishment is an evil, but it is an evil that may
ultimate in good, and when it is inflicted for such a purpose, it
is right and just. Now we know from numerous examples, many of
which I have given in this article, that God acts upon this
principle. He
uses evil as an instrument for good.Admit that this
principle is correct and that God acts upon it, and all is at once
accounted for an dits final result indicated. This sweeping
conclusion may not at once be clear to all, but a little thought
will show that it is fully justified. If it is right to use evil
as an instrument for good, and if god acts upon this principle,
the principle fully explaining and justifying the act, then is it
not reasonable to conclude that all evil is so justified? We
cannot enter sufficiently deep into God’s plans to be able to
explain the how and the why of each individual case,
but, once admitting the principle, and seeing numerous examples of
its application that we can understand, the conclusion is fully
warranted that this principle applies to all cases.

Of course, no one could
accept this conclusion who believed in endless torment. The above
principle will not explain or justify unmitigated and eternal
evil. I have already shown that such evil really dethrones God, or
at least shares His throne with Him, which is equivalent to
dethroning Him. to say that evil is absolute and eternal is to
fully invest it with attributes peculiar to Deity and thus to make
it “equal with God,” at least in some respects; but this cannot
be. At that rate there would be two gods, a good and a bad one,
and each of them would eternally exist and be eternal foes. To
such a frightful conclusion does the doctrine of the eternity of
evil lead us. Let those believe it who can. But, if we take the
Bible teaching on this subject, the principle enunciated fully
accounts for and explains the existence and purpose of evil. It
may seem to some that this principle cannot apply to all
evil. They are able to see how some evil may be overruled for
good, but that all the terrible forms of evil can be so
overruled seems to them impossible. but such a question is simply
on of degree. If God can make some evil conducive to
good, can He not so make all evil of whatever from or
quantity? If it is true that God uses evil for good at all, how
can we tell, not knowing perfectly God’s plans and methods, justwhat kind of evil and just how much evil God will so
use? We must conclude that all the evil we see about us in
every horrifying form and in all its vast amount comes under the
same category of part and parcel of the great plan that through
sin, corruption, chaos and death is moving on to holiness, purity,
order and life eternal.

Furthermore, thefinal outcome of God’s plan, so clearly revealed in the
scripture, fully confirms the foregoing view and, in fact,
irresistibly drives us to that view. All the details and every
particular of the plan in all its length and breadth are not
revealed, but the result is revealed. And that result, the final
outcome, is a perfect and absolute triumph for goodness,
truth, and justice. “Every knee shall bow and every tongue
shall give praise to God.” (Rom.
14;11; Is. 45:23).“The whole creation shall be delivered form the bondage of
corruption.” (Rom.
8:21). “All
things in heaven and earth shall be gathered together in
Christ.” (Eph.
1:10). “Death
shall be swallowed up in victory.” (I Cor. 15:54). “There shall be no more anything accursed.” (Rev.
22:3). “Every
created thing shall praise God.” (Ps.
102:18). This
is the outcome! Thank God, it is good
enough! To this
final result all things are tending. To such a universal victory
we are traveling on. We can see it by faith afar off.

I
cannot doubt that good shall fall

At
last – far off – at last to all.

If this is the outcome,
then all things, evil included, are to eventuate in good, and thus
we arrive at the same conclusion that we have reached in so many
other ways in this article. Evil must be done of God’s
servants for good. It must eventuate in good, for nothing
but good is the final result!

Thus does reason and
the Word set froth the purpose of evil. My feeble powers of expression are
altogether inadequate for the full presentation of the great truth, but these
thoughts will suggest the solution to the problem and will help the lover
of truth to a deeper and fuller apprehension of the unique and wonderful ways
of God; “Lo, these are parts of His ways; but how little a portion is
heard of Him, and the thunder of His power, who can understand!” (Job.
26:14).