Questions From Readers

● If Jehovah is supreme, why has he permitted wickedness to continue through the centuries?

It is this issue of sovereignty that is really at the basis of the matter. Wickedness began when a spirit son of God rebelled against God’s sovereignty. Of this spirit rebel the Bible says: “Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till unrighteousness was found in thee.” (Ezek. 28:15, AS) By revolting against God’s universal sovereignty, this spirit creature made himself a devil, and he came to be called Satan the Devil and “the original serpent.”—Rev. 12:9.

Satan induced Adam and Eve to revolt against God’s universal sovereignty. Satan’s boast was that he could corrupt any man and turn him against God’s universal sovereignty, just as he did with Adam and Eve. In the book of Job, chapters one and two, we read of Satan’s boast to God. Satan challenged God, in effect, that he could not put a man on earth that would keep integrity to God under temptation. Jehovah let the Devil put Job to the test, and Job’s integrity-keeping exposed the Devil’s falsity. So it has been through the centuries: God has permitted wickedness so that the all-important issue of universal sovereignty could be put to the test; and tied in with that paramount issue is that of man’s integrity.

But could not God have executed the rebel Satan and his earthly subjects, Adam and Eve at once, thereby wiping out all wickedness? Yes, but if God had done so we would not be alive today; and, above all, the issue would not have been settled to the full satisfaction of all living creation. It would have been debatable throughout eternity—involving such questions as, If God had allowed the Devil a wide range of action, would this wicked one have proved his point? And had God created man in such a way that it was inevitable that he would revolt against God if tempted? Such questions had to be answered decisively.

This has required time, time to give Satan a wide range of action to let him try to back up his claim, and time “that people may know that you, whose name is Jehovah, you alone are the Most High over all the earth.” For the sake of the issue God has permitted wickedness, but only until the issue is settled and God’s universal sovereignty is vindicated. The reason for God’s temporary permission of wickedness is well expressed in his words to wicked Pharaoh: “For this cause I have kept you in existence, for the sake of showing you my power and in order to have my name declared in all the earth.”—Ps. 83:18; Ex. 9:16.

● Why is there such an increase of wickedness today?

It is no chance happening that wickedness has vastly increased. Increased woes for the earth started with World War I. The year 1914, in fact, marked the beginning of the “last days.” The last days of what? Of Satan’s wicked rule over the earth and mankind. “The whole world,” says 1 John 5:19, “is lying in the power of the wicked one.” But why should the “last days” of Satan’s wicked rule bring such an increase in wickedness on the earth? The Bible answers.

“War broke out in heaven,” God’s Word tells us. This, of course, was warfare invisible to human eyes. In this heavenly conflict Christ Jesus as Jehovah’s enthroned King led heaven’s armies against Satan and his demons. The Devil met humiliating defeat in this conflict, as the Bible discloses: “So down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth; he was hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him.”—Rev. 12:7-9.

Satan’s debasement and confinement to the vicinity of the earth was certain to affect earth’s inhabitants, as the prophetic Word states: “Woe for the earth and for the sea, because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing he has a short period of time.”—Rev. 12:12.

It is the wrathful Devil, then, that is the cause behind the increased wickedness on the earth. Actually this dramatic increase of wickedness is most meaningful: Christ foretold it as part of the great sign of the “last days.” Besides his prophecy of world wars for the “last days,” Jesus foretold “the increasing of lawlessness.” (Matt. 24:7, 12) And Christ’s apostle foretold a moral breakdown in public and private life, which would include juvenile delinquency: “Know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, self-assuming, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, without gratitude, with no loving-kindness, having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness.”—2 Tim. 3:1-3.

So the sharp increase of wickedness today is because this world has entered the “last days”; and because Satan, restrained to the neighborhood of the earth and “knowing he has a short period of time,” has prodded peoples and nations to do increased wickedness in defiance of Jehovah’s universal sovereignty. Little wonder that human law enforcement agencies, unable to reach Satan, have been helpless to check the foretold “increasing of lawlessness”!

● With increasingly destructive weapons of war and decreasing morality and love of principles, what hope is there for man and the earth? Will wickedness ever be brought to an end?

Despite a race to make the deadliest weapons in human history, there is hope for men who love righteousness, hope to live forever upon this earth under peaceful conditions. Man’s weapons and wickedness do not make such a new world impossible. It is, of course, as Jesus stated: “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” And God has promised it: “There are new heavens and a new earth that we are awaiting according to his promise, and in these righteousness is to dwell.”—Matt. 19:26; 2 Pet. 3:13.

A righteous new world means peace for the earth, and a peaceful New World society is already formed. And already they live in harmony with the Bible prophecy: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares.”—Isa. 2:4, AS.

The New World society has no fear of the earth’s being destroyed by man’s folly. We have God’s assurance: “He has founded the earth upon its established places; it will not be made to totter to time indefinite, nor forever.” Nor will nuclear weapons make the earth uninhabitable; for God “formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited.”—Ps. 104:5; Isa. 45:18, AV.

God’s Word recognizes, however, that man is in the process of ruining the earth. So the Most High God has promised to take action “to bring to ruin those ruining the earth.” He will do this soon at the universal war of Armageddon, called “the war of the great day of God the Almighty.” This righteous war will settle the great issue, that of Jehovah’s universal sovereignty. Satan, who knows his remaining time is short, will not escape. He, together with his demons, will be isolated bound in a prison abyss. Thus Armageddon will accomplish what no human war has ever done—get to the root cause of wickedness. Executed also will be all human doers of wickedness, since Jehovah’s forces at Armageddon come “to execute judgment against all and to convict all the ungodly concerning all their ungodly deeds.”—Rev. 11:18; 16:14; 20:1-3; Jude 15.

Before Armageddon makes the way for God’s new world, a warning must be delivered. The peaceful New World society of Jehovah’s witnesses are sounding that warning, that all lovers of morality may flee from Satan’s doomed world and find protection by trusting in Jehovah: “Hope in Jehovah and keep his way, and he will exalt you to take possession of the earth. When the wicked ones are cut off you will see [it]. But the meek ones themselves will possess the earth and they will indeed find their exquisite delight in the abundance of peace.”—Ps. 37:34, 11.