Why Do Men Die? by R. F. Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 6, 1883

Why Do Men Die?

By R. F. Cottrell

MUCH fault is laid upon the God of the Bible because he lets men suffer and die, and this, in many instances, by those who extol the god of Nature. To those who reject the God of revelation, and deify Nature or any other fancied god, it is a sufficient answer to say that the god they admire is just as cruel—that he permits just as many to suffer and die—as the God of the Bible.

As I was speaking recently of the mercy and tender compassion of the Lord, that “like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him,” I was met with this objection: Thousands upon thousands have been and are suffering and dying of famine. The Almighty God of the Bible could, if he would, prevent all this by a single word of his power, and give them food; but he does not; therefore—

Now the great aggregate of all this suffering is indeed terrible to contemplate; but, as individuals, each one only suffers all that his nature is able to endure, and is relieved by death. And such has been the lot of all the countless millions that have lived from the beginning of the world to the present generation, with but two exceptions. The question, then, is resolved to this: Is it right for God to permit men to die?

Our Bible informs us that God allowed our race to choose between obedience and life, and disobedience and death. Our first parents sinned, and death followed. “The wages of sin is death.” At this point God might have given over the race to death and oblivion; but his tender mercy devised a way to redeem man from death by a resurrection, and the Father accepted the voluntary offer of the Son to assume our nature and die for us; so that, being redeemed from the death into which we had fallen, we might, as individuals, have another probation, that by faith and obedience and patient endurance we might have everlasting life in a world to come. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

The provision is made, and all are invited freely to come. We may become the children of God by faith in Christ. We are saved by faith in Christ. We are saved by faith and hope. Death still is the lot of the righteous, as well as the wicked. It is at the resurrection of the just that the saints are actually redeemed from death. “For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible; . . . then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.”

It will be seen in the end that God has dealt with our race in great mercy. He withheld not his Son, but gave him up for us all. We are his children by creation, but have become the children of the devil by doing his works. Still we may become the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ. “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.”

God has done, and will do, the very best for us that he can. He gives us the privilege of becoming sons of God and heirs of eternal life. And “like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him; for he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children, to such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them.” R. F. COTTRELL.