Question: How could a good God create anyone whom He knew would suffer eternally? | thebereancall.org

TBC Staff

Question: You justify God for sending people to hell because He has provided salvation for them in Christ. That won’t do, for millions and probably billions will spend eternity in hell. God knew that! How could a good God create anyone whom He knew would suffer eternally?

Response: God created each person with the capability to choose. One cannot have real human beings without the possibility of evil. So the issue is the existence or nonexistence of the human race: “To be or not to be.” The only way to have forever eliminated evil and suffering on this earth would have been not to create man at all. Although that would have eliminated all suffering and sorrow, think of the beauty and joy and love it would have eliminated as well.

God wants no one to go to hell, and He has provided salvation for everyone through Jesus Christ, whom He sent into the world “that the world through Him might be saved” (Jn:3:17). He is not “willing that any should perish” (2 Pt 3:9) but desires for “all men to be saved” (1 Tm 2:4).  Those in hell have only themselves to blame for rejecting the full forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life offered to all freely, by His grace, through Christ’s payment of the penalty for their sins.

Why would God create those He knew would ultimately reject the gospel? Why didn’t He only create those who would believe the gospel and leave uncreated those who would reject Christ? God knew that many of those who would, by their own free will, reject Him (although having the same opportunity to receive Him as all the rest) would be the mothers and fathers, the aunts and uncles, the children and grandchildren and cousins of millions and millions who would believe in Christ and therefore whose destiny is the eternal bliss and joy of heaven. If the former hadn’t come into existence, then neither could the latter. The only place for those who do not accept His offer of salvation is to be consigned to the lake of fire for eternity. “Not fair!” you say? On the contrary. God created the lake of fire for “the devil and his angels” (Mt 25:41), and it is not His will (Jn:3:16) that any should perish.