The suffering that leads to introspection and repentance only can guarantee sustenance and inner metamorphosis by cleansing and purifying. Sufferings cannot transform everybody’s life unless blessed from Above. The purity in the worship of God and the sincerity in looking after the brethren are the corner stones upon which one’s destiny is founded.

Mankind would have ceased to exist provided there has been no suffering for the fallen human race, the descendants of the fossil Adam, not the original one created by God. The suffering that leads to introspection and repentance only can guarantee sustenance and inner metamorphosis by cleansing and purifying. Like water that washes out the dirt of the body, the repenting tears only can cleanse the impurities of the soul. Suffering is a fire, either it consumes the impurities of life or makes total destruction of the qualities of life. Despite there were sufferings till Noah’s time due to sensual ecstasies, even begetting savages by sexual union between the sons of god and the daughters of men, they didn’t want to listen to God’s ways. It became imperative for God to exterminate the whole world, except the righteous Noah and his family, and cleanse the species for His own name’s sake. We are at the culmination of a similar catastrophe of Noah’s time (Mt.24: 37-40) as sins have multiplied beyond the horizons of our imagination by the infusion of inter-cultural, inter-religious and inter-national sub-cultural standards in every realm of social intercourse.

Sufferings cannot transform everybody’s life unless blessed from Above (Jn.3: 27). However, the passions of unearthly love and fear that derive through sufferings only can create miracles in transcending the quality of our mundane existence. Because wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold (Mt.24: 12-13). “But he who endures to the end will be saved”. “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom.5: 3-5). The white heat of suffering for God and righteousness cleanses the body, mind and soul, if taken in a religious sense. Thus suffering, the identical twin of man becomes a gift of God (Phi.1: 29).

CAUSES AND EFFECT OF SUFFERINGS:
It is a controversial and theological topic as old as life itself. People who don’t care to find their own inner guilt identify themselves with that of Job’s predicament. But are there many Jobs in the annals of history? Some people conjure up reasons that blame God for our foibles. Every man is an island in an ocean of viruses and bacteria, which prey upon us for their survival as man predates upon other living things. Hence infectious, chronic and contagious diseases and calamities are multifarious ingredients in the boiling cauldrons of this transient life. As man is a part and parcel of Nature, any change in the rhythm of Mother Nature will affect everything without any forewarning. The majority is of the opinion that God, the architect of fate, writes one’s destiny upon the head at the time of birth. Hope is considered as poor man’s bread, and many wait for the accomplishment of their sweet dreams, yet few of those impatient ones end their unending helplessness and hopelessness by committing suicides. We may have to console ourselves by Job’s mutterings; man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward (Job.5: 7).

But what are the mysteries and illusions of the bygone centuries that baffle us on this issue? The majority of religions have been teaching that the effect of sins resulted out of our actions and reactions are the destiny that controls our fate. The purity in the worship of God and the sincerity in looking after the brethren are the corner stones upon which one’s destiny is founded (1.Sam.2: 25). There are sins of commissions and sins of omissions. To worship God with the purity of heart and serving man without hurting him in thought, word and deed are the sanctimonious principles laid down in our heart at the time of moulding us in the womb. Predestination is a criminal accusation of the first degree against the Creator, and a justification of our sins. Infringing upon the Divine rules invite the maladies of life, the author of which is not God but one’s own misdeeds concocted by the whisperings of the powers of darkness.

Don’t get confused by the Omniscient God’s power of foreknowledge and predestination. “Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempt no one; but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it is conceived gives birth to sin; and sin when it is full-grown brings forth death (Jas.1: 13-18), the slow demise of the soul eventually breaks down the chemical human apparatus. For the wages of sin is death (Rom.6: 23), both spiritually and physically. The temptations that come from the devil are to be confronted by the weapons of God, instead of succumbing to them. “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1.Cor.10; 13; Jas.4: 7-8). The way of escape is the product of inner cleansing by wailings and sobbing. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool (Is.1: 18).

THE SINS OF COMMISSIONS AND OMISSIONS:
We have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God; the return we get is sanctification and its end, eternal life (Rom.6: 22). The basic reason for Jesus to remind the healed ones not to sin again is that sins build up a separation wall between man and God, inviting the demons to bring in all the havocs to parasite upon the weaklings. The notion for the root causes of chronic diseases are un-forgiven or mortal sins, despite modern theologians and medical professionals challenge them. “See you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse befall you”(Jn.5: 14). The paralytic was healed by the forgiveness of his sins (Mt.9: 1-5;Mk.2; Lk.5: 20). In order to forgive our sins we must have utter faith in the Lord (Lk.18: 42; 7: 50). Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead (Jas.2). For behind every sin there is a demon (Mk.5: 9; Mt.13: 19), which takes root in our body and festers us to become a vehicle of all the seven deadly sins that convert the body as the abode of darkness (Lk.11: 33-36). This darkness (absence of celestial radiance) is the breeding ground of the devil to fetter us with psychological and physiological infirmities.

The haunted man becomes normal by expelling the devil from the body (Mt.8. 28-36; Lk.8: 2; Mk.9: 14-29). The best remedy to escape from lethal diseases seems to “be careful lest the light in you be darkness”. When the body is cleansed from this darkness, even the infectious and contagious ailments cannot touch the body because the body can recharge vital energy for the resistance of foreign bodies. The purity of the heart, mind and body only can dispense with this inner energy that is acquired for the indwelling of the H. Spirit in abundance, which expels all the intruding bodies from without. Nothing can torment us if the inner man is pure. The purity of the heart derives from the quality and chastity of our inner harmony. Unless we put a strong harness to control our mind and body, the purity of the heart remains an enigma. Life remains as an unending battle till our last breath in taming the brutish body for which the devil also has a claim.

GIFT OF FREE WILL:
A true Christian faces a multi- dimensional front in the battle of the unknown; it is not an easy thing to bridle the passions of the body and mind. Put to death what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which are idolatry (Col.3: 5). I pommel my body and subdue it (1.Cor.9: 27) to this effect, claims St.Paul. The Pillar Saints and some other early Fathers used to bruise their body by various means for defeating the bubbling passions of their mortal frames; very many others detached their lives by spending their time in prayers and other austere means of fasting and effective abstinences. Proximity to God brings hostility from the son of perdition who tries to eliminate the holy ones from the face of the world by their crafty and subtle devices. A righteous man thus has two obvious battlefronts, one against his own body and the other against the agents of the dark empire (Eph.6; 12; Mk.6: 4). I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death; because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and men (1.Cor.4: 9). As servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way; through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments,....(2.Cor.6: 4-10; 11: 26-33). They end up as martyrs for God by the vile works of Satan, of course by the countersignature of God due to their ripeness to be in the celestial planes.

Those who work for the devil also become mature for the martyrdom for the predator, as they don’t be given a chance by the evil one for their repentance as in the case of Judas. He repented for the betrayal, but was thwarted away by the devil that made the chief priests as Satan’s spokesmen (Mt.27). This planet is not a conducive place for extremely good and extremely bad people as they are prone to kiss their untimely death by the agents of Hades, making one group traveling upwards and the other downwards. The righteous suffers for the sake of others or by the problems made by others and earns his salvation, where as the unrighteous invites troubles for himself and others by his devilish intrigues and reaps eternal damnation, unless getting absolution by repentance. “all who desire to live a godly life in Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go on from bad to worse , deceivers and deceived ( 2.Tim.3: 12-13; Jas.1: 12; Ps.119: 71;1.Pet.3:17). This world is a hothouse growth only for the mediocre who is best at baffling God and the underworld by oscillating between good and evil in tune with their ability to adapt themselves in vulnerable situations, which throw opportunities for the Lord and his enemies to wait and see how things would unfold in the future. God don’t punish his children with harsh sufferings, despite they are reflected as the punishments come from God (Heb.12: 1-12); the punishment is executed by the foe that waits for a chance for the inevitable retreat of God’s angels on account of ‘free will’ adorned upon man to choose between good and evil. Though Omnipotent God is, He is apparently impotent in one thing; the changing of one’s character despite His presence for help is always with him unceasingly.

IDEAL PARENTING:
The school of suffering is the best school that can educate a person provided one takes life in the right directions. The congenital tendencies, the author of which are mainly the parents, together with the background situations mould a person to give strength to wade through the rivers of bitter problems of this sojourn voyage. No one can buffet through this transitory life without tasting the bitter sides of it, though vary in degrees from person to person. It is better to toss through the adverse part of life in the beginning rather than in the evening of life, the time when it is too late to adapt or to change for the better because of the complexities and vividness of inescapable aura of our actions and reactions haunt us with. If caught up in certain corners of life, it is a Herculean task to hurl away from the invisible twists and knots that tether us there. The problems in life multiply in geometrical progression as time pass on, the wise is the one who corrects oneself in the beginning. When everything goes well, we justify all our actions and argue that God is on our side on account of our merits.

As we are thrown into the whirlpool of afflictions all of a sudden, either we curse God or identify ourselves as the scriptural hero, Job. If ill omens strike in the beginning of life, there is enough room under the shade of parents and relatives for stretching as there are no dependents or friends who become our enemies or critics unlike misfortunes hit us at a later time. Good parenting solves and equips their children for a later better life, which strengthens them to face any vicissitudes afterwards. Life is not meant to be easy in our fallen human nature. If spiritual transformation is the aim of life, we have to pass through avalanches and typhoons of life at various stages. Ideal childhood and teenage period is the moulding of our character, the silent creative period of making a sound mind in a sound body. This is the cradle of acquiring an astute and disciplined life by keeping pure our body and mind from defilements. As the unknown territory of future life is quite obscure and dark, one has to be under the implicit obedience of parents and teachers for rigorous training. The old Gurukulavasam (learning life by mastering all arts by sitting at the feet of the master) was an ideal set-up of that time, but the beauty of that difficult life vanished as the tides of time changed. One should experience at the dawn that quality of life is more important than life itself.

MISFORTUNES OF A NEW WORLD ORDER:
Due to natural calamities and furies we were only slaves of Nature, which determined the fate of our lives in the past. Man’s achievements in harnessing the inclemency of Nature are unparallel miracles that changed the destiny of Mother Nature and her children. If managed our daily life systematically and prudently, the dawn of paradise on earth is at hand. Raping Mother earth rooted out the scarcity of food materials, and man accumulated unaccountable amounts of money and luxuries which accelerated a life of surface paradise in parallel with the life of the celestials. We can fly, communicate at stellar distances and move along safely and securely and that was only a dream before the budding of technologies. Boasting as a demi-god, every one sucks the beauty of this earthly paradise planted in an alien culture by opening of Pandora’s box. Fax, emails, radio, T.V., automobiles, aeroplanes, computer blessings, remote control....are all the prototypes parallel on earth to a similar celestial life in the higher planes. Once we fancied in our reverie that having enough money to root out starvation, diseases, infant and sudden death, inequalities and exploitations of several types would solve all the problems of man.

Look at the miseries of a world that is being blessed by a pseudo angelic life, quite different from a long bygone era of the curses of a natural life. Can we now nod that man has been the real problem, not Nature? Man has evolved to be an endangered species now. God’s creation can no longer be fixed by a remote control technique, hence His imminent second coming is sure to happen at any moment. While one part of the world is dying for food due to mismanagement, war, suppression, repression, exploitation, malnutrition, chronic epidemics, the bitter fruits of the weapons of mass destructions, the rest of the world is dying by gluttony that perverts and degenerates the quality of a natural life persisted in this planet for an incalculable number of years. The lusty lifestyle of the flesh that doesn’t know the beginning and the past bought mass scale unnatural and untimely death warrants for mankind. Chronic diseases, incest, genocides and homicides, moral decadence and all other vices that came with it are the products of the diseases of the flesh which exposed and canonized an irreligious and immoral life. The effects and legalization of this animal life landed its inhabitants into a world of gluttony of sins. Tensions that generate this high life are of manifold dimensions.

IMPACTS OF ABHORRENT BANALITIES:
Children being the property of the state, parenting is a cumbersome task as the ‘spare the rod spoils the children’ lifestyle becomes an anathema for the alien generations, the product of a sub-cultural mould of technologies and vampire style of firebrand pop cultural heroes. One can’t touch, look, chastise, train or direct anyone on the basis of Privacy Act, Equal Opportunity Creed, Anti-discrimination and so many other unheard exhortation methods. Looking, misinterpreted as stalking, is a crime, whereas divorce, extra-marital relationships, dating, fornication and any other defacto relationships are all adorable qualities of a hybrid generation. To sleep with the spouse is treated as rape, unless previous permission is obtained. Immoral traffic in sexual arena is sacrosanct, while the road traffic infringements invite heavy fines and imprisonment. A double standard life, one for the budding teenagers and another for mature teenagers onward is a dreadful hypocrisy and mockery of Divine, Natural and intrinsic laws. Don’t commit adultery and fornication at any time has been the modus operandi for the God’s species till the blooming of this pop culture.

Bringing up children in a religious weather in this adverse climate of nudity and half nakedness in every walk of life involves continuous fuming and fretting. The glimpse of the nudities of modern culture can surely deviate even lord Shiva, as it happened in the antiquity by the appearance of goddess Parvathy in her romantic moods, from his transcendental ecstasies. All the religious ways of life is dynamited blatantly by humanism and civil libertine vices that are in contravention to the moral and religious covenants. Adultery, divorce, dating, abortion, euthanasia and similar things are treated as natural and unavoidable menu of our daily life. As religions and churches embraced them as the magna carta of our life, those who question them are challenged with fierce and vehement enmity from the majority simpletons. Gay marriage and gay parenting is another facet of satanic life that is blessed by the laws of the land, paving the way for the devastation of this planet by the fiery ashes of Sodom. All these banalities are framed, regimented and tested in the system through our domestic, educational and workplace culture; anyone who they think stands against to this vampire vulture will be pampered to dust.

The educational venues are the breeding grounds of these pests, the budding teenage life is injected with such vices of all kinds find its maturity and growth along with the slow ageing. Such persons who lost their simplicity, innocence, uprightness and individuality are good for nothing, unless they turn back from the raw nudities of life that has defiled their lives. The workplace life becomes a bed of thorns unless one supports and blindly goes along with it. Tensions of marital unhappiness, coupled with raising children, workplace and social irritabilities make this sojourn life as a synonym of nether world darkness. The tensions of the high society is exclusively kept apart for the blooming darkness of Kaliyuga because a bygone natural life couldn’t dream of the curses of an industrialized and stereotyped lifestyle geared with the weapons and tools of a technological, global society.

The Devil is exorbitantly hilarious once when the family life becomes a poisoned chalice. It disseminates its venom that legalized these banalities into the entire religious and secular systems to unseen directions. No hope for anyone bailing out from this conglomerate infernal anarchy set exclusively for ‘end of days’. Our fight so far has been against the passions of the flesh in choosing between good and evil as there was no legal authority from outside to impose all the filth upon us, where as the spiritual and legal custodians have been demanding us so far to fight against the flesh and enrich our soul and social life. They helped us by law in rooting out the maladies of the flesh: fornication, adultery, suicide, abortion, euthanasia and so on. The fight at the end of the time is not only against the flesh, but are of multifarious kinds and natures. “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers, of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph.6: 10-20).

The natural sufferings, somehow, could be solved by the aid of the celestials, but how can one escape from the tumultuous agonies that are bestowed globally upon all mankind at the end of the world, as exposed in the book of Revelations. Because of writing over a decade about the imminent coming of Jesus, most of my readers may yet label me under the category of lunatic imbeciles. Such cynical accusers, despite experiencing the conflagration that consume the humanity to its ashes, cannot see the shepherd who comes like a thief and collect the flock at the dead of the night. The beloved readers, the time for long slumber on the bed of roses is running out. There is no leverage to get out of this hazy maze, only suffer despite a possible solution suggested by St.Paul in the same chapter. “Therefore take the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; besides all these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray at all time in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me,....”

The adversities and challenges confronted by the Israelites in the deserts for 40 years, instead of taking the shortest route by a few years, are the similar precursory yardsticks that we face now in our pilgrimage to the Promised Land. The unfolding of the sterling quality of the king of metal is tested only under the baptism of fire. He who wears patiently the thorny crown of this life only can receive the golden crown of jewels in the Upper Plane (Jn.16: 33; Mt.5: 10-12). Therefore, the best lifestyle is the one that culminates in the martyrdom for Christ (Rev.6: 7-11), reciprocating the sacrifice He made for liberating man from the bondage of sin. To him who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone, which no one knows except him who receives it (Rev.2: 17; 3.21).