"Why do bad things happen to good people?" is the way we say it today.

That surely must have been a question on the hearts and minds of those first-century Christians as they suffered under the brutal persecution of the Roman empire. It is a question that surely was on the hearts and minds to whom John had written this extraordinary piece of literature we call the book of Revelation. Many of them were convinced that they were innocent and righteous sufferers sent to their deaths in the coliseum because they had refused to "burn incense to Caesar" and acknowledge that any one else was Lord of their life than Jesus, the Christ.

But there is even a more troubling question than "Why do bad things happen to good people?" that must have bothered them. "Why does a holy, righteous, and loving Go…