God and the Holocaust

I was in Hollywood with one of our Academies, when I heard a woman screaming at the top of her voice at one of the students. He had merely offered her a gospel tract and she was spitting sparks. As she crossed the street I switched my hand-held camera and followed her. I am always interested in why people are that angry at God.

The woman was pushing a shopping cart that was full of plastic bottles. She was probably in her early seventies and looked like an aged Katherine Hepburn. I pulled alongside her and asked her why she was so angry at God. It turned out that she was also angry at the world. I asked if I could buy her lunch. She ignored me. She said, "I am just fed up! I am fed up with being pushed around." She spat out "Why did God allow the Nazi holocaust!" I explained that Hitler, not God caused the slaughter of the Jews, and that happened because of the evil heart of mankind. I said that I didn’t know why God allows certain things, but that we all have sin in our hearts and we need His mercy. That didn’t help much, and she was still fuming as she took plastic bottles out of the trash. I asked for her name and again offered to buy her lunch. She ignored the offer and didn’t want to tell me her name. Suddenly she spotted the camera and told me to turn it off.

I then said that life has dealt all of us a hand of suffering, and we can either get angry and let bitterness destroy us, or we can overcome it with trust in God. "If anyone has a right to be bitter at God, it’s my son-in-law (who had just joined us). His own mother died in his arms of cancer." My son-in-law shared his experience and said that he loved the Lord, and wasn’t bitter.

She began to weep, so I hugged her and gave her some money for lunch. She then smiled and told me to turn the camera back on and gave us permission to use the footage in our third season of our TV program. We further explained the gospel, gave her some literature, and prayed with her. God only knows what she has been through in the past that made her so bitter, but He also knows her future, and if she loves and obeys Him her future will be sweet. Please pray for Earla.