What's the Difference if God Determines to Take One Man in Death or a Couple of Million as in the Flood?
People all over the world die every day. They die by heart attack. By cancer. By various diseases. By car accident. By warfare. By man's inhumanity to his fellow man. By falling off a cliff. By plane crash. By bug bite. Etc. Etc. Etc. Men die countless ways.
And each and every time a man dies – in whatever way he dies – it is God who has come into that man's life and taken it away in death.
The definition of death is when the soul leaves the body. Only God can take away the soul from a man's body. Therefore, only God can take a man in death.
God does this according to His time table for each person. Each of us lives today only by God's allowance. And when the day comes wherein God has determined to take our life – we will die. Nothing can prevent it. Exercise cannot prevent our death. Medicine cannot prevent it. Having a billion dollars and the best team of doctors in the world cannot prevent it. We will die when God wills for us to die.
And so, as we read a Biblical account, such as the man picking up a few sticks in the wilderness, and we find God commanded for that man to be stoned to death (executed).
Numbers 15:32 And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day.
33 And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation.
34 And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him.
35 And the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp.
36 And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the LORD commanded Moses.
Some use this true historical account as a way of charging God with injustice. How wrong it is that God commanded this man's life to be taken for what they view as an innocent transgression of simply picking up a few sticks on the Sabbath day.
Yet, the act of picking up a few sticks on the Sabbath day was a violation of the law of God. God commanded no work to be done on that day. And the man did a "little bit" of work, which was indeed a violation of the law of God. No work means no work. A little bit of work breaks the commandment. Just like eating one fruit from the forbidden tree was a violation of God's commandment even though only one and not fifty fruits were consumed.
There is no such thing as a "little sin". Sin is sin. And the wages of sin is death. And God's law is what determines something to be sin or not to be sin.
Getting back to this man in the wilderness, whose death so stirs up some to righteous indignation to the point of charging the God of the Bible with wrong doing.
Would it be better for the critic's sense of justice if God simply caused him to have a heart attack at the moment he reached down to pick up the next stick? Or maybe a stroke? Or perhaps a fallen stone to have struck him in the head and caused him to collapse and die. Or maybe you would feel better about God taking this man in death if his foot caught in a little ditch and he stumbled and hit his head against a rock. Or, what if God just decreed that he fall down as Ananias and Sapphira did when they held back part of the price of the land (Acts 5:5,10) – would that satisfy your sense of righteousness?
What's the difference if God has determined to take one man (or a couple of million as He did with the flood) in one way or another? He is God. And, obviously, He has the right to take anyone in death in any way He deems appropriate. Whether death come to the sinner via a "natural" way; or death come to the sinner by sovereign decree that a flood overflow the world. Or fire and brimstone fall from heaven. Or that Joshua and the army of Israel march around a city until its walls collapse and then enter in to kill every man, woman, and child within – it is all one and the same. It is all by the decree of the great God. Sometimes smaller decrees concerning only a single person. And sometimes greater decrees insofar as they concern an entire city or nation or world.
God's law is always just and righteous. God's judgment is likewise always just and righteous.
2 Thessalonians 1:5 Which is a manifest token of THE RIGHTEOUS JUDGMENT OF GOD, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer:
6 Seeing IT IS A RIGHTEOUS THING WITH GOD to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you;