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Where Is The God Of Justice

Why do thousands of God fearing Latin American Christians for instance, languish in the slums in abject poverty, while the drug cartels enjoy tequila and Cuban cigars? A few months ago there was a news report that a Missionary couple of Wycliffe Bible Translators, working the forests of Guyana had been brutally murdered. In third world countries in particular there is a marked, observable distinction between the lower, middle and upper classes. As one examines the “have’s” and the “have not’s” from a religious perspective it often seems to be the case that those who are highly religious or shall we say those who are godly often tend to find themselves at the lower end of the economic ladder while those whose lifestyles are divergent from Biblical norms seem to be flourishing. This observation is no new phenomenon however. The Psalmist David raised series questions about it in Psalm 73, Job raises a lament about it in Job 21: 7 -25 and the prophet Habakkuk contemplates it in Habakkuk 1:13. “ Habakkuk asks, how can Yahweh, whose eyes are too pure to behold evil, allow the wicked to swallow someone more righteous than he? Why do the wicked prosper?”
The question of the prosperity of the wicked is a question of theodicy (vindication of divine providence in view of the existence of evil). It is central to section of the Bible under review, Malachi 2:17 – 3:5. According to The Expositor’s Bible Commentary , unlike most other prophets Malachi mentioned no dateable person or events in his brief prophecy. Clues to the origin and time of his book must therefore come from the text and its implications. It has always been placed last in the minor prophets. The Talmud regularly classes the book among the postexilic prophets. The contents of the book suggest that it was written some time after Ezra. Some of the exiles had returned, the temple had been rebuilt and the sacrificial system had been reestablished to the point that...

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