Dear Fellow Believers,

Philosophers, and even some smart people, have longed to understand the purpose of evil . But God doesn't give it to them. Instead, He gives the greatest insights on this topic to the unwise, weak, ignoble, and stupid of the era. These are generally the types of people able to read God's Word on the subject and believe it. These people are ignoble in the eyes of the world, but in the eyes of God they are noble as can be.

Most people don't believe God's word on the subject because, 1) they don't believe there is any such thing as "God's Word" and 2) the are Christians. 

You may ask, "But don't Christians believe God's Word? " Ha! No. Good try though. Christians only believe the parts of God's Word they want to believe. They only believe the parts that fit their personal ideas about God.

For instance, when God says in Isaiah 45:7, "I create evil,"----Christians don't believe that. None of them do. This is because they think evil is sin. it's not sin, but Christians don't generally stick around long enough to hear this explained. So they look at this verse in the King James Version, shake their heads and say, "I don't believe that." See? It's just like I told you. It's like looking God smack in the face and saying, "Nope. Nice try, God."

In the NEXT Grace Cafe episode we look into the definition of the Hebrew word "ra" (translated "evil" many times in the Hebrew Scriptures.) In THIS episode we demonstrate from Scripture that God is the One Who not only created evil, but BRINGS it upon people and nations—all for a good and glorious purpose. How do we know it's always for a good and glorious purpose? Because God is love.

Everyone at the table here at Studio B of WCCD radio in Cleveland contributes valuable insights: Mike, Denise, Charlie, Ted, and Ken. (Well, not so much Mike. He's always trying to wedge in a song whenever he can; no one disrupts me when I'm on a roll more than Mike Telep.)  

Thanks again to Rodney Paris who not only rescued this twenty-four year old cassette tape from a storage unit in Canton, Ohio, but makes valuable and helpful text comments throughout this video; more than Mike Telep, the "music programmer'" and "Martin Zender derailer" of Grace Cafe.

Thank you to all viewers and subscribers; you are my friends and you continue to support this channel and ME—the guy who supplies the channel with content. I love producing the content (over 2,500 videos to date) and you love helping me do it. As we draw nearer to the close of this eon, we are seeing more and more fruit from this channel: subscribers are way up and the views are going through the roof. THIS IS ALL BECAUSE OF YOU.

The "something extra" video that Rodney tags onto the end is a real hoot. I may run it as an independent video tomorrow, on Christmas day. We'll see. It couldn't be more appropriate. ❤️ 

Yours from the edge of the bottom of the Floridan peninsula,

—Martin