20/07/2011 - The punishment of the wicked

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The righteous is delivered from trouble, and it comes to the wicked instead.

Proverbs 11:8

The servants of the Most High have got to learn that they are susceptible to the same assaults that others suffer. Actually, the fact of belonging to God does not prevent the enemy from trying to make us suffer and because we believe in the Gospel that does not mean that a barrier will be built up all around us in order for the devil not to bother us. Yet, when an evil attack is stricken the Spirit of the Lord comes through and gives us deliverance.
We know that our Father does not operate when we don´t do our job. For those who practice the Word of God as they feel an evil assault is coming all they have to do is to stand firm in the Word of the Lord and put into practice their authority. The title “righteous” is given to those who practice the divine righteousness (I John 2:29), which means that those people take possession of the statements found in the Word of the Lord and they rebuke evil; by not accepting it in their life.
Now those who deem what is written in the Sacred Book not to be very important usually realize that evil attacks against their lives find open ways ahead. That happens because those who do not abide by the divine ordinances are not answered when they cry out because what they did to the Holy Word prevents them from receiving the benefits of the Lord. To those who know The Truth the saddest and most insensible thing is when they put themselves against the divine revelation because that turns men away from the operations of God.
The wicked do not walk in the ways of the Lord and for that reason they go through a lot of suffering and they take the place of the righteous to suffer the anguishes that that one would have faced. By all means, those who pay no heed to the eternal Word behave in
an insane way because apart from their own trials they will even have to face those in which the servant of the Lord would have gone through. If somebody is in that position and they get to know about that statement it is better for them to repent of their bad attitudes and to seek the forgiveness from Above.
From the statement that the righteous person’s anguish will come to the wicked, we can understand that, many times, the trials that we go through have life and intelligence. The same can be understood when we read in the Bible that Naaman’s leprosy was caught on Gehazi, the greedy worker of Prophet Elisha (II Kings 5: 27). Well, anguish is an evil action which needs to find a victim. If those who are righteous intercede the Lord allows that that bad feeling that he would feel be passed onto the wicked.
Now God will do nothing without your fulfilling your job. During His earthly ministry Jesus had to reprimand the forces of hell that oppressed those who were seeking His help. That sets the example to us on how we must behave as we go through trials: just like Israel in the past we have to fight against those who attack us because the Lord gives us the capacity to do so.
In Christ, with love,
R. R. Soares