God And Hitler: Who Was In Charge? Part 2

Germans in the 1940s. Adolf Hitler led the nation on the road to ruin Hitler almost destroyed your millions were to leaving those that survived asked the question why why would God allow such a thing to happen from the Moody Church in Chicago.

This is Remington with Dr. Erwin elixir whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line best elixir. It seems clear that no one can amass the kind of power, Hitler amassed unless God allows you know, Dave. That's actually quite a scary thought but biblical thought that no one rules except that God gives them permission to rule and even though they may be in the hands of the devil.

Ultimately the devil himself is still in the hands of God, and that's one of the lessons that we have to learn when we think about what is happening in history.

I've written a book entitled Hitler's cross how the cross was used to promote the Nazi agenda very important book and what I would like to do is to make sure that you have a copy of this book. Now the end I'm going to be giving you some of this information again, but you can go to RTW offer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337 as well been said that if we do not learn from history.

We will repeat history. That's why it's so important for us to listen to this series of messages the Holocaust could not have happened unless God gave permission for it to happen could not happen except God gave permission he signed off on it. He initialed the memo. If you're struggling with that.

Just hang on for a few moments, but it can be no other way. No man will accept it be given to God and Pilate instigated the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and said yes go ahead and crucify him. And Jesus said, that could never have happened unless it were granted to you by God. Now that your Bibles are open turn to Revelation chapter 13 for just a moment.

Revelation 13.

This is an awesome passage because the Bible teaches another Hitler is coming and this Hitler will not be worse than the other one in terms of being more evil. But he will be more cruel because the technology that he will have is technology that Hitler did not have way back in the 30s and 40s. This is antichrist.

I don't have time to read all eight verses that I would like to but I'm gonna pick it up right in the middle of the verse and his mouth was like the mouth of a lion. This is in the middle of verse two. The 13th chapter of Revelation and the Dragon that is Satan gave him. That is the beast, namely antichrist, he gave him his power and his throne and great authority. The Dragon, the devil is getting to antichrist his power and his authority. Notice it says verse four and they worshiped the Dragon that is Satan because he gave his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, who is like the beast, and who is able to wage war with him.

Notice verse five and there was given to him a mouth speaking blasphemous words and authority to act for 42 months was given to him for five times in these verses. It keeps saying it was given to him. Verse seven is breathtaking and it was given to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority over every tribe and People and tongue and nation was given to him. This is breathtaking in its scope and all who dwell upon the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain. Think of the awesome authority that antichrist is going to be given there's a part of me that reads that it recoils I say all God. How can this be the only part that gives me hope is that it was given and when it is taken away.

Antichrist will fall and be humiliated and spend eternity in hell. That's the only thing that gives me comfort. But here's my point is the Dragon who gives to antichrist such awesome authority that all the tribes of the earth, and everyone will worship him and he will control them all with the most meticulous control system one could ever imagine. As we will discuss in another message but who is it that gives the Dragon is authority coordinates come from the output is to have no power at all against me at Blessed were given to the from about God. God.

So ultimately, even though antichrist is in the devil's hands, one must recognize that even the devil is under the ultimate authority of God, and God prescribes the limits of his power and prescribes the limits in the areas of his work and says this far and no further. That's why the Bible can predict it's going to last exactly 42 months because these things are not left to chance.

God got rules so let us be very clear in what we are saying God rules in the affairs of men number one and the secondly God delegates authority to angels to demons and to men and now number three God holds Satan men and angels responsible for all of this carefully. He holds them responsible for the evil that he lets them do. He holds them responsible for the evil that he lets them do Einstein.

Many people believe to be the most brilliant man who ever lived, and that may be true, he certainly would be among the most brilliant.

He believed in God, but he did not believe in a personal God. And the reason that Einstein did not believe in a personal God is the dilemma that he face that we are talking about this morning. It is this Einstein says if God is the creator. If he is the preserver. If he is a personal God, and the sustainer of the universe when he hands out rewards and punishment. In effect, he is handing out rewards and punishment for himself because all of this carefully, as creator he would be an outcome lists in the evil. Now we aren't as brilliant as Einstein, but all of us have struggled with that.

Had we not is not this the dilemma that keeps us awake at night. If we are thinking clearly how can God be sovereign and rule and still hold men accountable will you know what the Bible teaches that God holds men and angels accountable because they have wills they are not just simply puppets. They do have wills and though he rules they have enough independence that he can hold them into account for what they do. If there is anything clear in Scripture, it is the responsibility of Satan and man. It is the responsibility that God puts upon them. Now notice my message this morning and its title it does not say Hitler or God who was in charge. That would've raised a false dichotomy. It says Hitler and God who was in charge. God's role was doing the delegating Hitler's role was doing the destroying. But God says you Hitler and all the Nazis and all actually were speaking not only historically here were speaking for all of mankind. You will be called into account for what you do, your independence is sufficient for judgment.

And so, thirdly, God holds Satan and then responsible for the evil he lets them do number four.

History will end. According to God's plan.

It will end. According to God's plan. I read a moment ago Scripture that says here in the book of Revelation that antichrist is going to arise. You have Napoleon you have Hitler you antichrist is going to come out of Europe and he will arise. But it will end the way God predicts it to end the 42 months, then destruction and you have all of those events that will take place and a vivid description later on in the book of Revelation regarding eternity and hell and a judgment it will end of the way God wants it to and Ephesians chapter 1 verse 11 it says to the end of that all the purposes of God might be accomplished for her.

He works all things after the counsel of his own will. Let me quote that again. He works all things after the counsel of his own will me say this point that there are three different ways that you can react to divine Providence. And I've met people who have reacted in all three different ways. Sometimes the same person having reacted in all three ways.

First of all, there can be atheism.

Atheism, you can save yourself the God that you are talking about today can't exist.

There can be no God who could look down upon the Holocaust without intervening. If you knew the suffering and I have met people who have gone through the Holocaust were talking about something that is a part of living history and sometimes in despair. They say there can be no God, no God, that's one possible reaction.

It is an understandable reaction but it is very hopeless and wrong reaction. I have a Jewish friend with whom I discussed these things and we are good friends or neighbors actually and that he does not believe in a personal God. I asked him whether or not this gave him some disquiet of spirit to recognize that people like Hitler and other Nazis would never have to give an account to God for what they did. He agreed that that was probably and well might that be troubling.

There is something within us that cries up and says where is justice. The desire for justice is so great, but if you are an atheist you have to believe that the desire you have in your breast will be on answered because there is no tomorrow. Atheism very unsatisfying. The providence of God is a second response and that is anger. Anger whenever people say to you, things like your God must be the devil treated with great sensitivity because there are a lot of hurting people in the world today who with experienced perhaps not Nazi Germany, but the atrocities in their own life or here in the city of Chicago with its crime and with its random from our standpoint.

Totally random violence and all of the things that take place, let us always remember that there are people hurting in the world. Some of you have been viciously abused and so is easy to become angry to say yes. I believe that God exists. But I don't want to have a thing to do with him. If he exists. He is the devil that is a very very understandable response. But very fruitless and very wrong. Fruitless, because actually you are hurting yourself. God can take your anger. Believe me, and actually you're doing yourself harmful because you are closing yourself off from another side of God's character his mercy and his grace whereby he can save you and deliver and you know that there is nobody who is ever taken on God as one nobody. God lets them win the for a little time to display their foolishness.

But in the and they lose it is not possible to shoot down an aircraft carrier with a pea shooter. Don't bother taking on God. That's another responsible atheism, anger the other response can be all all absolutely overwhelmed to say God if you're the kind of God that can allow the Holocaust if you're the kind of gotta look down from heaven and saw the suffering and did not intervene all on what kind of a God you must be. I want to make sure that I flee to you for forgiveness because someday after death, I will stand in your presence and I do not want to meet you on prepared Bible says that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God on prepared. I just can't believe the naïveté of theological liberals they can use me. Here are people who believe you know in the Old Testament God was a God of judgment.

God was a God who seem to be angry with sinners in the New Testament, Jesus presents a different God. Some liberals have said there to God's there is a God of the Old Testament.

There is the God of the new others of said bullet. It represents an evolution in our understanding of God and so they say God you know would never have a hell prepared for those who do not respond to his son that is unthinkable. I'm just saying to myself, even if you don't believe the Bible.

Open your eyes and look at the Holocaust look at the fact that God was willing to allow those atrocities in all of the different countries of the world, the anguish, the children that are being wounded in a herd and starvation. It is impossible for us to even grasp for a moment all the hurt on this planet does not that make you stand in all of God and say I had better prepared to meet him after death and the Bible says that Jesus Christ died that he might shield us from the wrath of God, having absorbed it in his own person, having received it in himself that he might say to all of us who are sinners and we all are your forgiven and you stand before me as absolutely righteous and here's what I want to say today.

Folks, no matter what your response is whether it is atheism.

Whether it is anger or whether it is all the purposes of God will be accomplished.

You and I we may protest what God does. But it is of no value. The best thing we can do is to get on his team. No use opposing the awesome unbelievable God of history's purposes will be accomplished. He works all things after the counsel of his own will. Number five. We can arrest we can rest with confidence in the wisdom in the wisdom of God's ways we can rest. I'm talking about believers I'm talking about those who have made their peace with God through Jesus Christ we can. Not only no God but we can be assured that everything that comes to us has passed him. It does not come without approval. Is there somebody out to get you with the business where you work. Somebody would like to undercut you. Somebody wants to undermine what you are doing to humiliate you.

Is there somebody like that and you have become angry, and you have become perhaps even violent because you think how unfair this world is my dear friend, I want you to know that that person would have no power at all against you were not given to them from above God is watching God is orchestrating God is a limiting God is there some of you, perhaps because of ill health. Some tragedy that is come to you, you realize your mortality and you realize that you're in a situation where there appears to be no hope want you to know today that as someone who has believed in God's precious son that those things do not happen to you, except that God has said yes to them, not yes, in the sense that he delights in them, but yes, in the sense that he permits them that he might through those circumstances teach us things that we could never possibly learn and we become acquainted with the hidden purposes of God. When we ourselves are confronted with a mystery.

The great mystery of providence, and it is the mystery of providence. Have you ever noticed how often in the examples that I gave you when Hitler referred to Providence.

He called it fate, because you see those who believe who follow Satan or follow themselves all that they have really is to cast themselves upon the fate, fate means that I cannot control the circumstances, fate means that I simply cast myself upon events that are limited in their ability to work themselves out for my good and therefore I become helpless fate means that the outcome is uncertain because we're in touch with somebody and events that cannot keep their promises how different that is how very different that is from divine Providence, Providence, means that we believe in a God whose promises will be fulfilled. We believe in a God who is trustworthy. We believe that there is a divine and and that history is not merely random history is moving toward a goal if you say what is that goal.

We don't have time to go into that. This morning a number of years ago I preached a series of messages entitled what is God up to where we try to explore God's ultimate intentions and purposes, but we can't do that exhaustively. We have glimmers God shows us what he is up to, to a certain extent, but at the end of the day, we must rest our heads on the assurance that God knows best.

His justice and his mercy will be displayed and we bow in humility before God, who is a God of greatness, a God of glory, a God of mercy, under God of ministry. Hitler believed in fate. We believe in faith. Actually when he used the word of fate, he should have used the word doom he should have said, I am doomed to lead. We my friend today are destined to inherit heaven for ever hunted difference between faith in the devil a being who was limited and the faith in the great mighty God who rules the nations about whom the text of Scripture says all the nations of the earth are but dust on the balance like waters in a bucket who is counted the stars who is number them and yet he calls the host of them all by name and he keeps them there and the number of our hair is known to him, and it is in his hands that we can lovingly entrust ourselves, say, does this mean we will not have tragedies. Yes, we might, Jesus entrusted himself to his father and Pilate said go ahead, crucify him.

But there could be nothing against him unless it were given to him from above those of you who are bearing heavy burdens today. Why not cast them on a qualified God and leave them with him no matter what.

He takes us through. He will walk with us through it. And in this series of messages will give you examples of people who believed God even in the midst of Nazi Germany.

Although the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out for who hath known the mind of the Lord for who have been his counselor who have borrowed from him that from him. It may be borrowed again for all him and throw him and to him are all things, all glory and honor and all dominion, both now and for ever. Amen. Yes, my friend.

We have to always remember that God is God plenty of ministry, but thankfully we also know him through Jesus Christ, Victor Frankel said these words. I'm convinced that the gas chambers at Auschwitz and Treblinka were ultimately prepared.

Not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers what he was saying is that what was taught in the universities set things up for the Nazi agenda.

There are so many lessons that we have to learn.

I've written a book entitled Hitler's cross of the cross was used to promote the Nazi agenda and I wrote this book to help people to see the streams that bad Nazi-ism. The failures and the successes of the church and there were some successes and what we can learn in our own day now for a gift of any amount. This resource can be yours. Here's what you can do. Go to RT W offered.com that's RT W offered.com or and I hope you have a pen that you can write this down call 1-888-218-9337 did I say that to quickly here it is again 1-888-218-9337 ask for the book entitled Hitler's cross of the cross was used to promote the Nazi agenda you can write to us at running to win 1635 N. LaSalle Boulevard Chicago, IL 60614 running to win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life.

It's tough running a race when your coaches loyal to your competitors for Christians. That's what happened in Nazi Germany. The church fell into line fast. Hitler rose to power.

Next time the lessons we can learn from this sad capitulation and how to prevent it from happening again for pastor Erwin loop certain this is Dave McAllister going to win is sponsored by the Moody church