Dear SS( sincere seeker friend):
I have struggled with the question about "Holocaust" again and again, or else I won't goggle it again every time some tragedy of mass killings happened.
Nevertheless, I maintain my faith in the goodness of God though at this side of Heaven, we don't have perfect answer, trusting that God knows better.
Well, I think an illustration of a Persian rug perhaps can give us a help in eternal perspectives. In our lifetime, we only see the chaotic underside of the rug, but God see the upper side, the beautiful rug, a beautiful rug is appearing day by day.
Only when the Weaver stops the loom ( our life ends), and we see God face to face, we may see the meaning of our sufferings in life.
Does Holocaust bring some good results out of it? I think so. Perhaps Florida High's mass killings will bring change to US gun laws, I hope.
...Holocaust played an important role in the founding and long term visibility of the State of Israel in three respects: The Holocaust motivated large numbers of immigrants to move to the new country, providing the necessary population; secondly, the Holocaust enabled Israel to pressure Germany into supplying the economic base necessary to build infrastructure and support those immigrants; and finally, the Holocaust swayed world opinion so that the United Nations approved the State of Israel in 1948.
See also the attached word file which the author supports this point of view.Furthermore, Jesus wept for Jerusalem before He went there to be crucified. How willingly, God would like to gather us like chicks under a mother hen, yet many of us are unwilling. You see here, human free wills is in the way to block God's loving will to prevail on earth.
Also Jesus recounted Jews' killings of God sent righteous men, and Jews are notorious in their rebellions against God throughout their history, so they were dispersed throughout the earth and lost their country for more than 2000 yrs.( The prophets had warned them again and again throughout OT times about this consequences of rebellions. And Daniel's famous prayer was praying for his country fellows and confessed the national sins and his own sins.)
Furthermore, people walked away from God, and then if they were devoured by wild beasts like tigers, lions ...etc.虎豹豺狼( real or figurative speaking)，should they then blamed God?
May God's truth dawn on you!
Holocaust Apologetics: Undoing the Death of God
What would be some of the inevitable consequences of persisting in the belief that there is no God or that God really did die in the Holocaust? A rational exploration of these consequences may cause our Jewish friends to reevaluate their atheism.
•Consequence # 1: Illegitimate Law
• Consequence #2: Whimsical Morality
...
( From my email to a seeker friend)
Let me re-cap a few answers we have come up before and update a little bit more.
First of all, God was at the same place, He sacrificed His only begotten Son, so He knows very well the pains the Jews who went through the Holocaust, either dead or survived.
2ndly, Jesus wept for the city of Jerusalem since He knew that Romans were coming to destroy the Jewish country pretty soon.( around AD 70)
So God is shedding His tears for His fallen creatures made in His image too.
3rdly, it is human free wills that caused the mayhem. ( God's will sometimes is not carried out on earth because of bad guys' free will evil doings.)
What if humans don't want to follow manufacture's book( Bible) and go astray their own ways. ( tell me, if we neglect the instruction of putting gas into gas tank but
we rather like to put water into gas tank because we think we are smarter, the results would be a dead car, right? So if humans don't obey and follow God's instructions,
they can all become small Hitlers.
4thly, Actually, fallen human nature is sinful, so we all have a little Hilter inside us, that is the root of all human sufferings and pains.
5thly, If there were no God, there were no absolute moral standard, so atheists couldn't claim that Hitler had committed horrific atrocities, genocides...etc. at all.
i do remember one time you said men are like animals so there are no absolute "right" or "wrong", animals kill to survive, right?
6thly, The funny thing is we all have a built in conscience that bothers us and let us feel guilty from time to time.
( even though some cultures may numb human conscience to the lowest level.)
Our built-in conscience points to our Creator God who made us in His image. So mankind is not just animal evolving at all.
Rather, humans are ruining their God bearing images instead...
