When God told Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, Abraham faced a dilemma. On the one hand, he loved his son. On the other, God told him to do it. So he worked out away in his mind to fit these seemingly incongruent elements together. He concluded that after he offered his son, God would raise him back to life again. That's what we read about his thinking in Hebrews 11:17–19. But he left out a possibility—that God would stop him before he ever went through with the offering.

The problem of evil is very difficult for us as mortals to harmonize. There are several ways that people use to try to resolve the difficulties of this age-old, worldwide question. But many of these are invalid approaches to the problem of evil. We must do our best to think clearly although that can be hard to do. We must not come up with a "solution" that denies the nature of God, the word of God, or the reality of evil itself. This episode will introduce us to some of these incorrect approaches.

Read about this subject

• Scriptures: Isaiah 45:7; Isaiah 14; Romans 11:22
• God at a Distance, Kerry Duke

View more on this subject

• “Are We Born in Sin?”