The Children of God - The Inside Story

The Children of God
The Inside Story By The Daughter Of The Founder, Moses David Berg
by Deborah (Linda Berg) Davis with Bill Davis, 1984

PART TWO
Chapter 18

Where Is God?

As time and the grace of God separate me further and further from the Children of God and its evil world, I sometimes find myself standing in wonder as I experience the unseen hand of God working miracle after miracle in my life. It is something awesome to see the depth of God's involvement in the affairs of mankind. But there have been times also when I was overwhelmed with the ambiguities of life, when all I could see was suffering and injustice. At those times, the question would spring from my doubting heart, "Where is God in all this?"
    Many times I have asked, "Why, God? How could it be that You allowed my father to mingle the gospel of Jesus Christ with sexual perversion and occultism? Why didn't You stop him, Lord?" In searching for answers, I began to see in my mind's eye a picture that has opened the doors of my understanding.
    The history of man's relationship with God demonstrates that mankind is often unaware of the plane on which He operates. After the fall of man, creation grew increasingly wicked. Evil abounded to such a degree that God sent a flood to destroy every living creature, except for Noah and his family and the animals in the ark. Afterward, life began anew. But the fallen human heart continued to sin. In response, God raised up Abraham to be the father of His chosen people, Israel, through whom all the world would be blessed. Through Abraham, God promised the Messiah: a King over kings, the Prince of Peace, the Savior of the world who would take away and forgive sin.
    Thus Jesus was born. God incarnate. He healed the lame, fed the hungry, and opened the eyes of the blind. He commanded the people to love their enemies; He exposed self-righteousness as the most heinous of all spiritual crimes. He raised the dead. And He Himself was rejected and put to death by His own people. As the Scriptures promised, He was raised from the dead. Appearing to His disciples, He commanded them to go into all the world and preach the Good News. All but one of His chosen twelve were martyred.
    The followers of Christ grew and multiplied. Saul of Tarsus, one of the most avid persecutors of Christians, was converted and became the most important leader of the early church. Yet persecution of the church continued. Centuries later, the emperor Constantine was converted, and the persecution of Christians was ended. Rome, the one-time scourge of Christianity, now earned a place in church history as the seat of organized Christianity; yet peace continued to elude the life of the church.
    Eventually, a new word crept into the vocabulary of Christendom like a malignancy: Inquisition. Saints of God were butchered under the auspices of the organized church, Christ's representative body on earth. But how could the Body of Christ destroy its own?
    Soon came a man named Luther, and with him a reformation. Calvin, Knox, and Wesley followed. Cromwell and Puritans. Catholics and Protestants. Belfast, IRA, and death. The New World and freedom of religion. Denominationalism and Fundamentalism. Pentecostals, Dispensationalists, Charismatics, and Evangelicals. The Moral Majority and Right to Life. Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and holocaust. Israel, the PLO, and more death. Cults. Jim Jones and 912 dead. David Berg, the Children of God, Flirty Fish, Jesus Babies, incest, Moses David, my father.
    Where is God in all this? How could He allow these inconsistencies, these atrocities, these injustices? Was God unaware that the murders of the Inquisition were carried out in the name of Jesus? Where was He, and on what plane does He operate?
    Amid my confusion, I began to see that because of sin, God was forced to reveal Himself to mankind through the intimacy of His suffering. When we come face to face with all the world's suffering and pain, God's position becomes strikingly clear: He is under it all, bearing every sin. As the world suffers, so does God. He is not apart from it. He is not aloof. When sin entered the universe, God's response was to bear the sin Himself. As the Scriptures reveal, "We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21).
    Oswald Chambers writes, The revelation of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took upon Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took upon Himself the heredity of sin which no man can touch. God made His own Son to be sin that He might make the sinner a saint. He deliberately took upon His own shoulders, and bore in His own Person, the whole massed sin of the human race. . . .¹⁴⁰ And the intimacy of His suffering continues to be revealed as we witness the persecution of His Body, the church. Even though Christ died two thousand years ago, His suffering was not limited to Calvary. The truth emerges that He still suffers.
    When a voice thundered from the heavens, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" Saul responded, "Who are you, Lord?" The divine reply was, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting" (Acts 9:4). Through this encounter, the mystery of the suffering Body of Christ is revealed to us in marvelous clarity. Indeed, Christ continues to suffer.
    So where is God in all this—in the perversion of the Children of God, the blasphemies of Moses David, the thousands of Jesus Babies who will never know their fathers? I think I am now coming to understand, in small measure, where He is. He is suffering.
    With each sin, with each injustice, with each persecuted member of His Body, Christ suffers. This is the intimacy of His suffering that reveals to us God's relationship to mankind because of sin.
    I used to ponder, Who's side is God on—Russia or America, Catholic or Protestant, Arab or Jew? I think now it is not so much a matter of God's choosing which side He is on, but it is man's place to choose to be on the side of God. Each man has to take up his cross personally, individually.
    Having lived ten years in a movement founded on one man's personal sin and rebellion, I am beginning to see Christ's relationship to sin. People can mingle the name of Christ with their sins as my father is doing, but it does not affect the Truth. It only proves to us why God had to send His Son. It only reveals deeper the depravity of man and his need for redemption.
    I believe that is where God is in all the world's injustice, in the murders in Belfast, in the religious hypocrisy of the church, in the depravity of Moses David and the COG. He is there and He suffers. Yet through His suffering, Christ has conquered all that is false, all that is a lie. Judgment will come. It must be that God will judge the world and its sin.
    Until then, we know that God's Truth is far stronger than any Inquisition, greater than the religious conflicts of Catholics and Protestants, and far deeper than the deceit of the Children of God. God's truth is greater than any sin. As the world lies in suffering, so Christ suffers; and through His suffering, we can experience forgiveness; that bridge between a holy God and sinful man. Christ died for guilty individuals, and it is on this plane that we must meet Him. But this is an awesome perspective, for it places us face to face with God.

- the end -

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