According to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, "God's works of providence are His most holy, wise, powerful preserving and governing all His creatures and all their actions." This comprehensive statement says that God's providence encompasses all, and not merely some, of the acts of His creatures. Such a definition would include big events and trifles as well--good things, but also evil ones too. Does not Jeremiah teach the same doctrine? "Who is he that saith and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?" (Lamentations 3:37). Is Acts 15:18 any different? "Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world." If all His deeds are known to God from the beginning, there is nothing not known to Him. Nothing escapes His purposes, not a single hair or a falling sparrow.
Neither you nor I would be here to discuss providence if Providence had not brought us together in this fashion, if God had not done His will in the earth. How conscious we are of all the little details on which our lives to this point have turned. I do not know the trifles in your life, but I do know those in my own. Let me mention one. If a child had dropped a marble one inch more to the left, or if for some reason I had put my foot down one inch more to the right as I went down a fire escape, I would not now, perhaps, be writing about providence at all.
Not only in your life and mine, but in the lives of historic public figures the same significance of detail is apparent. A.H. Strong, in his Systematic Theology, reminds us that Mohammed's life was once suspended by a literal thread. The prophet, fleeing his enemies, hid in a cave across which a spider quickly spun a web. When his pursuers saw it, they were convinced that there was no one in the cave and went on. Mohammed was spared, and his religion today numbers more than three-hundred million adherents.
But if trifles are vital parts of divine providence, what about evil? Evil is often vastly significant. The most important event which ever occurred was, in one aspect, horrible evil. The crucifixion of Jesus, from the standpoint of the crucifiers, was grotesquely wicked. Yet, even though the killing of Christ was an atrocity itself, what event was so vital, and its effects so beneficial, as the death of Christ? If God's providence does not include evil, it does not include the most important event which ever took place.
So we say providence is a two-edged sword. It cuts both ways bringing both the good and the evil (differently, to be sure, but bringing them nonetheless). If we deny either, we deny providence. If we deny providence, we deny God. If we deny the benign, we deny the goodness of God. If we deny the evil, we deny the severity of God. The Bible denies neither, but affirms each. "Behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in His goodness--otherwise thou also shalt be cut off" (Romans 11:22).
Let us consider, then, these two aspects of divine providence. But first we will examine what I will call "negative providence."
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