I did ask if he suffered but I did also ask if he is suffering now.
Hi Zander, there are Scripture that indicate that God certainly sympathizes and is long-suffering towards us while we bare through the physical life.
2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
Rom 9:22 What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,
Rom 2:4 Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?
This is a time/age that God takes no delight in the suffering and death of the wicked. Here is where spoke a bit about this.
http://bible-truths.com/twelve.htm ----------------------------
A few years ago someone tried to trip me up with this verse:
"They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spoke it neither came it into My mind" (Jer. 19:5).
Here, I was told, is absolute proof that God learns new things that He didn’t know before. Nonsense.
This is a simple problem of translating. The word translated "mind" in this verse is the Hebrew word leb, and it means the "heart with its feelings," not the mind. The King James very often confuses heart with mind and mind with soul, as if they were one and the same thing even though there are different words for each.
God’s plan and purpose for humanity consists of many, many things which are not after God’s own heart, but that are, nonetheless, absolutely essential for the completion of His plan:
"Say unto them, As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?" (Ezek. 33:11).
This is God’s HEART speaking in this verse. But in the MIND of God, the death of the wicked was absolutely necessary, and a prophesied fact that could not be avoided:
"For I will lay the land most desolate, and the pomp of her strength shall cease, and the mountains of Israel shall be desolate, that none shall pass through" (Ver. 28).
This is but another of countless examples in Scripture that show God’s mind and His heart. God takes no pleasure or delight in His heart over the horrible things that continually happen to humanity, but nonetheless, these things are absolutely essential to the fulfillment of the plan that God has devised in His mind.
It is absolute blasphemy to think or teach that God is the Creator of all that is, but then takes zero responsibility for all the evils of that creation—ALL is of God.
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mercy, peace and love
Kat