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What the Bible says about Link Between Natural Disaster and Behavior
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Amos 4:6-12

Behaviors have consequences. Actions have reactions. Causes have effects. This is a law of nature that many moderns have sadly forgotten, or in their hubris believe that they can mitigate.

We perhaps see this most starkly in the world of health. A young man in his rebellion lives a wild life, drinking, carousing, and sleeping with multiple women throughout his college years. Soon, he finds he has contracted a venereal disease. "No problem," he thinks. "I can just go down to the clinic, and the doctor will prescribe something to cure me." He thinks he has just defeated cause and effect, but in reality, he has just treated a symptom. The compound effects of his earlier lifestyle may not reveal themselves for years—in fact, they may ruin his entire life!

Because of this kind of rationalization and short-sightedness, God works on a far larger canvas when it comes to teaching humanity lessons, and sometimes even the destruction of whole nations and millions of people fail to impress the truth on some. We can see this in His dealings with Israel and Judah over 2,500 years ago. He called Assyria to invade Israel several times, carting off hundreds of thousands of slaves, and they still did not make the connection between their sinfulness, particularly their idolatry, and their destruction (II Kings 17:5-23). A similar series of events befell Judah just over a hundred years later.

Through Amos, God shows us that He uses natural disasters to show His displeasure (Amos 4:6-13). These "acts of God" occur on a scale so immense that man's activities have little or no effect on their outcomes. Who can stop the earth from shaking? Who can hold back the howling wind and driving rains? Who can "prime the pump" to make the rain fall and break a drought? Who can plug the magma vents of the earth? Man is essentially powerless against the awesome forces of nature, and if we believe that God is nature's Creator, we should ask ourselves why such things occur.

Our current drought affects upwards of 40% of the nation, and the problem is not just lack of rain anymore. Drought conditions cause other "natural" consequences. Earlier this summer, we witnessed one of the most spectacular effects of extended dry weather: forest fires. As the drought continues, however, new problems begin to crop up.

As a result of the parched conditions, beetles are boring through forests, invading farmlands and chomping on crops, making an already bad season worse. This includes the attacks of bark beetles, grasshoppers, Mormon crickets, and disease-carrying mosquitoes. On the grasshopper front alone, some infestations are the worst since the Great Depression, costing millions of dollars.

In addition, drought drives wild critters into the suburbs. We occasionally hear of bears wandering down from the mountains into populated areas, but this "invasion" is far more diverse, including snakes, bighorn sheep, ducks, and rats as well. Experts believe scarce water and the resulting food shortage is forcing these animals to extend their range. Nationally, out-of-bounds wild animals cause an average $22 billion in damage each year, drought or not.

We have still not encountered what may be the worse result of drought: famine. However, it is prophesied for the end time. It is the third seal of Revelation 6:5-6, interpreted by Jesus in Matthew 24:7. Even a wealthy and productive nation like the United States can be brought to its knees by famine—and our vaunted pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality could do nothing to stop it. And that is where God wants this nation—on its knees, but in repentant prayer, not despair.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Bugs and Beasts

Amos 4:6-13

In the book of Amos, God shows that He uses "natural" disasters to teach people lessons, to bring them to repentance, to correct their ways. In this passage, He also admits that most people fail to make the connection between the disaster and their sins.

Secular Americans snicker at insurance policies that refer to hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and other natural disasters as "acts of God," when they, in their scientific arrogance, prefer to call them "acts of nature" or "weather events." Even those who are moderately religious, like the Deists of the Enlightenment, do not believe that God is active in earth's events, whether natural or human. To them, He may be watching, but He certainly is not involved in human affairs.

This points out how utterly blind to God most people are, even Christians. For starters, because they are not looking for God's hand of intervention in their lives, they are certainly not going to see it. Having become so secular and scientific in their outlook, the miraculous is totally off their radar. They consider those who report of miracles to be medieval in their thinking and the miracles themselves to be mere coincidences of natural phenomena or overstatements of what actually occurred. To them, miracles are impossible because, by definition, they are unverifiable by scientific methods and therefore do not and never have happened.

Today's thoroughly modern Christian does not derive this negative view of God's intervention from His Book. In the Bible, divine involvement in human affairs occurs from cover to cover—in fact, it is the central fact of human existence, which the Bible takes great pains to reveal. At every critical point in man's history, God has been involved. At Creation, before and after the Flood, at the dispersal of the nations from Babel, in the history of Israel, among the great empires of ancient history from Egypt to Rome—God was instrumental. God Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, came to this earth and lived among us, bringing us the good news of His Kingdom and dying for our salvation. Then He sent His apostles to the four corners of the globe to spread the word among those He would call.

That sounds as if God is active and involved in human affairs.

As Creator, He certainly has power over the various elements of His creation. Manipulating the weather is like child's play to Him. He can send rain or drought anywhere, anytime. He flooded the entire earth to a depth greater than the height of the tallest mountain of the time, so flashfloods, coastal floods, and river floods are easy. Spinning tornadoes is like breathing to Him, and earthquakes rumble and tumble at His command. The Bible makes many claims about His power over the elements (Job 26:7-12; Psalm 147:15-18; Nahum 1:3-6; etc.). Jesus Himself calmed the storm with a word (Matthew 8:24-26).

He also says that in His Millennial Kingdom, He will send drought on areas that refuse to keep His feasts (Zechariah 14:16-19). Are we to assume that, for some reason, He does not punish for sin now?

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Divine Intervention

Galatians 6:7-8

In the days after September 11, 2001, a few brave souls linked the tragedy to America's increasingly immoral lifestyle, but many of these initially courageous people were shouted down, lampooned, and condemned for their "callous and judgmental" remarks. Because they are unfamiliar with spiritual laws and processes, most people see no link between so-called natural disasters and behavior. However, Christians have no excuse, as this principle is clearly a biblical one.

God explains it in his instructions to Israel just after receiving the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai:

Do not defile yourselves with any of these things [sexual immorality]; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants. You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations, either any of your own nation or any stranger who dwells among you (for all these abominations the men of the land have done, who were before you, and thus the land is defiled), lest the land vomit you out also when you defile it, as it vomited out the nations that were before you. (Leviticus 18:24-28)

We are all sinners, so we all deserve death (Romans 6:23)—it is as simple as that. None of us is really innocent. The people who died in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in western Pennsylvania were indeed innocent of the causes for which the Islamic terrorists justified their violence. In that sense, they were "innocent victims," and we properly mourn them and sympathize with their survivors. However, as human beings living in bondage to human nature, they were not—and neither are the living.

This begs the question, then: Did the events of September 11, 2001, cause us to make the proper changes? In the United States as a whole, we have clamored for the government to protect us better, to avenge our fallen fellow citizens, and to act so that such a calamity will never happen again. These are certainly logical changes that should be made—and frankly, should have been made years ago. Yet, these are all external changes. What changes have we made personally, internally, spiritually, behaviorally?

The book of Amos is all about this principle. God wants us to evaluate ourselves, our morality, and our relationship with Him in light of what is happening within the nation. Our sins play a part in the collective immorality of the nation, and He wants us to own up to them and change our ways. God says in Amos 4:11-12: "'I overthrew some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a firebrand plucked from the burning; yet you have not returned to me,' says the LORD. 'Therefore thus will I do to you, O Israel; and because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!'" God allowed a disaster to occur, and because He saw no change in the people, He sent an even greater one.

We do not know if that is what will happen. However, as the homosexual agenda strengthens, as our culture becomes more vulgar and sexual, as injustice and ungodliness increase, God is watching. He has shown in the pages of the Bible what He has done in the past, and He says He does not change (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8). We will reap what we sow. Is it not time to consider whether we have learned the right lessons from 9-11?

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Sowing and Reaping


 




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