God does not change the word, His definitions are the pure Truth. The Lord says that fornication must be punished. But if a person repents, he has escaped the action of God's punitive definition. So is Nineveh. Punishment was promised to robbers and villains, and they would definitely receive it. But Nineveh repented, ceased to be a sinner, therefore, in fact, the punishment did not fall on her.

It is unjust to inflict punishment on those who repent. It must be remembered that here are not mechanical laws that do not look at man, but the free good will of God. Imagine, for example, I can say to an alcoholic: if you continue to drink, I will not pour you a glass. But then the man stopped drinking, five years passed, he came, chilled in the cold, from the street, and I poured him a glass of vodka so that he would not freeze. Did I break my word? No, he did not. "Why?" "He's no longer a drunkard.

The logic is very simple: if you don't do this, then this will happen. This is what God says: if I come to a nation or a city, I will bring a great calamity upon them as a punishment for their sins, but if the people reform and do good, I will postpone the punishment. If I want to bring some good to a people, and they begin to do evil, then I will postpone the good that I wanted to do.

Here it is not God who has changed, but what has changed to which His action is applied. If a sinful person is converted and begins to do good, repents, confesses, asks forgiveness from God, then all iniquities will not be remembered to him. But, on the other hand, if a righteous man did righteous deeds and, trusting in his righteousness, did evil, thinking that the cup of good deeds would outweigh the cup of good deeds, God will say that no good deeds will be remembered to him on the day of punishment, and he will perish for his iniquity.

"Does God approve of evil and is the cause of it?" — No, I don't. - Imagine a situation - a fascist is going to shoot small children - where is God? Does he approve of this case? "A fascist shoots himself, it's his choice, God may or may not interfere with him. Again, why? He looks at the condition of the children. If they die now, where will their souls go?

If they go to Him, He will not interfere. They will go to the Lord and become saints and rise bodily. And if so, then the problem of death will be destroyed, and murder is not terrible for them. But God can also protect them. Why? Because they, for example, are not baptized. The Lord wants to save them so that they can be baptized later, if He knows that they will be baptized, He will save them from death.

He can also keep them alive because he knows that one of these children will grow up to be a great righteous man who will save many other people. But in all cases, God does not force a German to shoot innocents. "Are the soldiers to blame if they followed orders?" "They could not have carried out the order. An order that is contrary to God's law cannot be obeyed.

"No, I mean that they were carrying out the order of the high command. This is his crime, not theirs. "Nevertheless, this is their crime, of course. Any soldier who has carried out a criminal order is a criminal. You need to listen to God, not people, this is a general Christian rule. Let us continue to talk about the properties of God Himself. We know that He doesn't change.

We see His power, we believe that He is omnipotent, He can do anything He wants. And this omnipotence was manifested not only in creation, but also in the fact that God is the Almighty. He still rules the world. Holds the world in His hands. It gives existence to the existing, life to the living, reason to the rational. We must remember that the Lord hears the prayers not only of Christians, but also of other people.

After all, in fact, God hears everyone who calls on Him. There is, for example, a tribe of Semang in Indonesia. They remember God only during a typhoon. As a hurricane comes, they begin to remember Him and call upon Him. Usually they do magic, they offer sacrifices to demons, and as soon as it comes to a hurricane that demons and idols cannot stop, then they fall down to God: "Creator, don't, we are with You, You forgive us, please."

Because they do not want, in fact, to live in God's way. We must remember that the Lord hears everyone, without exception. If a person prays to God, he will certainly be heard. That's not the question. God hears all who call upon Him, and if the petitions are good, He will grant them. But the Lord saves only those who are united with Him in the Sacrament. It is important to distinguish between hearing and salvation.

Some people say: we prayed, and God heard us, so we are right. But this is not so, we were right, because we prayed. And we are wrong in the fact that we do not want to be churched. The mistake is very common. There are cases of God's obvious intervention: a person called out to the Almighty, prayed in an airplane, for example, in a falling plane or in a burning car, and the Lord heard.

The person calms down and says: everything is fine with God and leave me behind with your repentance. But does this really mean that our whole life is justified by one fervent prayer? Of course not. In the literature of the Holy Fathers, there is a case described when a prostitute was walking along the road and saw the widow's child who had just died. This touched her so much that she fell to her knees and began to pray: "God, forgive me that I, a harlot, turn to You; I know that I am a sinner, the last criminal, but not for my sake, an abominable sinner, but for the sake of the widow's tears, raise him up." And the child was resurrected.

But this does not mean that fornication is justified. A person who has cried out to the Lord must change, give up his sin. Many people do this – they will call on God, He will help, but the person will not even say thank you, he will turn around and walk. Unfortunately, such a terrible thing is happening – monstrous ingratitude. And the Scripture said that Israel was full, fat, fat, and turned its back to Him that made it. This is what is happening now.