Even the most loving of spiritual leaders, those whose hearts are filled with tender mercy and compassion for the persons to whom they minister, must occasionally speak the word of God with sobriety and sternness. They must sound the warning voice.. They must call sinners to repentance. They are too kind, too considerate, to do otherwise.
“The Pains of the Women and Children Who Were Consuming in the Fire”
God is not the author of evil, yet within limits and bounds he allows it to exist. This is done so that the righteous might merit the fulness of his glory and that the wicked, the workers of evil, might in like fashion merit the fulness of his wrath. Suffering sanctifies the souls of the faithful. The inflicting of that suffering soils all that is decent and makes the perpetrator a fit companion to the devil, to merit as he has merited and to be rewarded as he will be rewarded. Mocking and scourging, bonds and imprisonment, flight and refuge destitution and torment have been the common lot of Saints in all ages. Yet that God who is not unmindful of the sparrow that falls has witnessed it all-he “having provided some better things for them through their sufferings, for without sufferings they could not be made perfect” (JST, Hebrews 11:40).