Adrian Freer is the author of books on reservoir fly fishing, fly dressing, trout fly patterns, religious topics, children's stories and poetry.

ARE THE 'NATURAL DISASTERS' WE ARE WITNESSING TODAY THE RESULT OF GOD'S JUDGEMENT?

 

Bible reading: Amos 4:6-13

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“Also I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, And lack of bread in all your places; Yet you have not returned to Me,” Says the Lord. “I also withheld rain from you, When there were still three months to the harvest. I made it rain on one city, I withheld rain from another city. One part was rained upon, And where it did not rain the part withered. So two or three cities wandered to another city to drink water, But they were not satisfied; Yet you have not returned to Me,” Says the Lord. “I blasted you with blight and mildew. When your gardens increased, Your vineyards, Your fig trees, And your olive trees, The locust devoured them; Yet you have not returned to Me,” Says the Lord. “I sent among you a plague after the manner of Egypt; Your young men I killed with a sword, Along with your captive horses; I made the stench of your camps come up into your nostrils; Yet you have not returned to Me,” Says the Lord. “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; Because I will o this to you, Prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” For behold, He who forms mountains, And creates the wind, Who declares to man what his thought is, And makes the morning darkness, Who treads the high places of the earth—The Lord God of hosts is His name.

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This evening I want to be very practical and spend our time looking at a question that crosses the minds of both Christians and non-Christians from time to time. It concerns the natural disasters we are witnessing today, especially the most serious ones. Could they be as a result of God’s judgement rather than mere accident?

 

You may think this is a rather periphery topic but I would suggest that it has real significance to Christians.

 

Can I say at the outset that the very fact that we often ask this question is because such notions are tucked away deep within the human conscience? You may not agree but I offer that thought.

 

Some of the examples we could quote are as follows:

 

Notre Dame Cathedral, one of the most iconic buildings in Paris, but also a symbol of the apostate Roman Catholic Church that deceives multitudes of people, especially poor and ignorant folk, with a false gospel that sends them to a lost eternity was virtually destroyed by a fire that, to this day, the cause of which has never been satisfactorily explained. Can I quote one expert after the event, ‘no source of heat, no torch, no electrical apparatus is allowed; a high-performance alarm system is in place; and [there is] very strict supervision of all people allowed there’. Nevertheless the fire did occur.

 

California, one of the powerhouses of the LGBT movement and sexual deviation and perversion has been racked in recent times by wildfires that have devastated much of the state. Occurrences such as these are a phenomenon that those in authority put down to climate change or global warming and can be scientifically explained.

 

York Minster was struck by lightning in 1984, three days after the consecration there of David Jenkins as the Bishop of Durham. Bishop Jenkins was someone who dismissed the reality of the virgin birth and denied the reality of the literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus, one of the foundational aspects of our faith.

 

These are just three examples. We could mention the recent bushfires in Australia and whether they are in some way connected with that country’s recent liberalization of abortion legislation. What about the coronavirus in China where they have attacked and demolished churches on a massive scale.

 

Could the reality be somewhat different and even more alarming? That God could actually be angry? If you do not believe in God you will, of course, cast around anywhere for explanations other than think that He might actually be in control of events because that would demand a rethink and response.

 

Could these things just be fluke coincidences or are we to read more into them than they are simply tragedies that we should expect to occur naturally?

 

Before we go too far I think it wise to strike a note of caution and say that we must not jump to sensational conclusions every time something like the events I have just recounted take place. Romans 8:22 tell us that, ‘For we know that the whole creation groans and labours with birth pangs together until now.’

 

In Luke 13:4-5 Jesus told His hearers that the tragedy that occurred when the tower at Siloam crashed and killed 18 people was not because they were more evil that the rest of the population, but He nevertheless used it as a warning to His hearers to repent, '"Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”’

 

Such things are at the very least a reminder that we never know when we will be called upon to give an account of our lives. The same was true in the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:13-21.

 

The natural world we live in and the fallen state of humanity are blemished to such an extent that bad things are what we should naturally expect.

 

In what is generally considered to be the earliest book of the Bible to be written, there are these well-known words in Job 5:7, ‘Yet man is born to trouble, As the sparks fly upward.’ That is the plight of sinful man and we can all bear testimony to the fact that those words apply to every single one of us.

 

We are told in Scripture by several of the OT prophets that God does indeed use natural disasters when His errant people stray from Him. In the book of Joel He used locusts among other things to bring about His warning to repent. These natural incidents were used both as a punishment and to bring the nation to its senses to forsake its evil ways and return to Him.

 

I want therefore to consider one such passage from Amos which was read earlier to see what we can learn from it. I think you will agree that the time of Amos very much mirrors our own and therefore it is doubly relevant.

 

Amos prophesied during the reigns of King Uzziah of Judah in the south and King Jeroboam II of Israel in the north which would place what occurred around 760BC.

 

Amos was a shepherd and a farmer of sycamore figs by occupation who came from Tekoa. The town still exists and in 2018 it had a population of 3,882. Tekoa is located about 12 miles south of Jerusalem and 5 miles south of Bethlehem which places it in Judah, the southern kingdom, but Amos was called to prophesy to the northern kingdom, Israel, which is also called Samaria.

 

That in itself caused problems for Amos inasmuch as the people he spoke to did not want to hear a message of judgement, and especially from someone who they considered to be a foreigner. More than once they told him to shut up and go and prophesy to his own people instead. Nevertheless Israel is where God called him to speak His words.

 

At the time we are speaking about, in both the northern and southern kingdoms things were going very well for them materially, but on a spiritual plane things were very different. They were going through what we would describe today as an economic boom. The rich were well-off and getting richer and many of them owned several houses but sadly the poor were getting poorer.

 

As is so often the case, when everything is going well, people tend to forget that it is God who provides the blessings and religion sinks into lifeless formalism and that is what happened. The nation still carried on with its religious observances and all the ritual feasts but it was totally corrupt and therefore unacceptable to God.

 

In our land we make a really big show of Christmas and many go into churches to hear the readings and sing the carols who would not normally cross the threshold at any other time and there is all too often nothing behind it of a spiritual nature whatsoever other than perhaps a warm emotional feeling. When you look at the shops and pubs Christmas is nothing more than an opportunity for a money-making racket – and an extremely profitable money-making racket at that.

 

That is a mirror-image of Israel during Amos’ time.

 

Throughout Amos the prophet thundered out warnings of impending judgement that went unheeded and the nation eventually did suffer as he had prophesied and so I think there are some very significant warnings for western society today.

 

So let us look at the passage we read earlier.

 

In v6 the prophet tells his hearers, ‘“I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities and lack of bread in all your places, yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.’ Here Amos is challenging the people and saying that in spite of God bringing famine, cleanness of teeth is a picture of having nothing to eat that would dirty your teeth; and a lack of bread, the staple food for life, the people did not heed the obvious warning to repent.

 

In this instance the prophet is telling his hearers that this disastrous famine most definitely was as a result of God’s anger and His punishment on His wayward people.

 

The prophet goes on in the next two verses, vv7&8, to inform the people that the drought they had suffered was as a direct result of God using the weather to inflict His judgement, ‘“I also withheld the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest; I would send rain on one city,  and send no rain on another city; one field would have rain, and the field on which it did not rain would wither; so two or three cities would wander to another city to drink water, and would not be satisfied; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.’

 

We see drought all over the world and this is a phenomenon that God uses to inflict judgement. Rebellious men may well say that all this is simply man-made disaster, which in a sense it may be because if we obeyed God He would not need to chastise us, but behind these events God is using everything He created to get His message across.

 

We read in Scripture that in Elijah’s time God brought a similar drought that was to last three years. We read about that in 1 Kings 17 and 18.

 

Let us look at another so-called natural phenomenon that God uses to accomplish His purposes in v9, ‘“I struck you with blight and mildew; your many gardens and your vineyards, your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.’

 

As Louise will tell you I am not much of a gardener but many years ago one house had already been planted with a number of rose bushes. They were very striking in bloom but they were also very prone to all sorts of problems. There were greenfly, mildew, rust spots and it seemed I was continually spraying them with insecticide or fungicide or something else. When I moved I vowed never to have rose bushes again.

 

These attacks are all an outworking of the blight on the environment as a result of the fall and God uses such things to achieve His purposes.

 

In this verse there is also a reference to God inflicting judgement by using locusts as His tool. We don’t get them in our climate, although they have been known, and apparently Antarctica and North America are the only continents where they are totally absent but in warmer areas they can be absolutely devastating. In 2019 there was a severe locust invasion in Ethiopia, Kenya, Eritrea and Sudan when farmers lost 100% of their crop.

 

You will remember that locusts were used as the eighth plague that God inflicted on Egypt before the Exodus.

 

In v10 the catalogue of woe continues, ‘“I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt I killed your young men with the sword, and carried away your horses,  and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.’

 

Pestilence refers to epidemics, pandemics and virulent diseases sweeping through the population and looking at our 21st century world, despite all the medical advances, illness and disease are a huge killer. They are in the news at this very moment.

 

It is surely no surprise that sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV and AIDS are rife amongst those who persist in perverted lifestyles. We cannot dare to say such a thing in our liberal, liberated society but such things are the direct result, and God’s judgement, upon those who need to be warned to repent and change their wicked lifestyles which are contrary to God’s perfect design for man.

 

You cannot flaunt evil at God and think that you will get away with it unscathed. In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 there is a stark warning, ‘Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.’

 

If you want to spend eternity in glory, despite what even some within the church may say to be inclusive, you cannot be one of these people.

 

Take note of four stark words of warning, ‘Do not be deceived’.

 

In this verse in Amos there is also the warning that God allows those who He punishes to suffer and die as a result of war and conflict. The scale of this is vividly described by the picture of numerous corpses being left unburied to rot and cause a foul and oppressive stench. When the Northern Kingdom was eventually defeated and taken into captivity their oppressors were savage and brutal and merciless.

 

The next picture Amos gives in v11 is that of turbulent catastrophes similar to that which overcame Sodom and Gomorrah which the Lord destroyed by fire, ‘“I overthrew some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.’

 

When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah as a punishment for their perverted and immoral wickedness He saved Lot and his wife and his two daughters who were literally plucked from the fire by God as they were urged to flee by the two angels. The sad thing about this account is that Lot’s wife could not bear to leave her sin behind and she longingly looked back, contrary to the warning by the angels. She was turned into a pillar of salt as a memorial to what sin can do.

 

There is a warning for us all here not to look back with longing at the sin that God has rescued us from but instead look forward to the new life in Christ that He had prepared.

 

When we are tempted by sin, as Jesus warns us in Luke 17:32, we must, ‘Remember Lot’s wife.’ She forever stands out as one who was given every opportunity to be rescued but the seduction of sin was to prove her downfall. She, just like Amos’ hearers, refused to return to the Lord.

 

God is patient and longsuffering but we must not presume and try His patience because there does come a point when He says enough is enough as He did to the Northern Kingdom when He finally gave it over to conquest by the Assyrians.

 

Throughout all these warnings and disasters during Amos’ time the nation had multiple opportunities to repent and change their ways and come back to what they were supposed to be – part of God’s chosen nation to demonstrate to the rest of the world how a nation should operate with God as its sovereign head and eagerly obeying His commands.

 

Sadly as the passage tells us and history confirms, they did not. The phrase, ‘yet you did not return to me’ is repeated five times in this short passage.

 

Applying what we have looked at tonight to the current day and our nation in particular we have had many warnings, and God has delivered us from our enemies on numerous occasions. What has largely been the response? We have turned ever further from the Bible, from worshipping God, and from following His precepts.

 

Our nation is indeed ripe for judgement. When you look at the progression of evil in Romans 1 it tells us how things happen. Let us look at those three steps.

 

1. First of all we see that although man knows the truth about God his fallen nature is to be deliberately and wantonly disobedient. This of course goes way back to Genesis when Adam was told how to behave but he purposely disobeyed and defied God.

 

1. The next step is that God withdraws His restraint and gives mankind over to his evil thinking and hardens his heart in , T

 

1. The final stage is that man’s thinking degrades into madness in , ‘ You have to say that some of the things we see promoted by the government and liberal thinkers, frequently using what they call ‘scientific evidence’ to prove and justify their claims, are the product of an unsoundand irrational mind.

 

Such things as gender realignment, homosexuality, the murder of the unborn at will, that we descended from a blob of slime millions of years ago and that perversion is perfectly all right, are all products of a debased mind.

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We have a former prime minister who says with all sincerity on her part that you can wake up one day, with all the genes, chromosomes and appendages of one sex but if you decide you are the opposite one then you must be – she must be delusional. I cannot think of any other explanation. And yet this is the person who ran our country, pretty unsuccessfully I hasten to add, for three years. It is almost unbelievable.

 

All this irrational thinking is made to sound rational but as believers, enlightened to the truth by the Holy Spirit, we can see that this is foolish. To those with a darkened mind, however, it is not just acceptable but desirable and they naturally promote these evil things as good and seek to influence others to follow their evil ways.

 

We are told this in Romans 1:32, ‘Though they know God's decree that those who practise such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practise them’. This is not just wicked but totally delusional.

 

God is not mocked, however, and He does act when His patience runs out. These natural warnings He is giving today are just a prelude to the judgement for sin that will occur either in this life or certainly in the one to come.

 

We next read these solemn words of Amos in v12, ‘“Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!"' One of the questions we all have to ask ourselves is whether we are truly prepared to meet our God.

 

Who is this God who we should prepare to meet? He is the one described in v13 thus, ‘For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth— the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name!’

 

The words of our opening hymn ‘O worship the King all glorious above’ are a feint picture of just how awesome and powerful He is. He is a God of love, yes, but He is also a God of wrath and judgement who punishes the wicked. We need to be cleansed from our sin and be on His side to escape His justifiable wrath.

 

If we are cleansed by the blood of Christ and seeking to honour, follow and obey Him that day will hold no fear for us but all too many we meet every day spare no thought whatever for that awesome day or even believe that it will befall them. The message of the gospel must always hold out that dire warning to repent before it is too late.

 

So to conclude and attempt to draw out a modern-day application that is relevant to us in the here and now, what about the natural catastrophes that we considered at the beginning?

 

• Was the destruction of Notre Dame a fluke – or a warning call from God?

 

• Is God singling out California as an example because it controls much of the entertainment that promotes and encourages evil lifestyles – or do such things just happen?

 

• When the fireball struck York Minster was that mere chance – or something more sinister?

 

To put the facts into perspective let us look at just one of those events in a little more detail in order that we can decide whether or not it was a warning.

 

David Jenkins was the Bishop of Durham, which is the fourth highest position in the Church of England. He was someone who denied the reality of the virgin birth, one of the fundamental aspects of our faith, and also, referring to the resurrection, used the words that it ‘“was not just a conjuring trick with bones”. He was responsible for undermining the faith of many who he should have been encouraging and not hindering.

 

Three days after his consecration at York Minster at 1.56 a.m. on Monday July 9th 1984 the South Transept roof of York Minster suddenly burst into flames and was totally destroyed before the Fire Brigade could do anything about it. This was a singular event because although the official explanation has always been that a bolt of lightning caused it the sky happened to be completely clear that night and nobody heard any thunder. Some eye witnesses spoke about a strange “sword-like stab of fire” reaching down from a “rugby-ball shaped orange object” above the Minster.

 

The Cathedral’s roof was fully wired with lightning conductors which for some reason did not work that particular night. In addition there were six smoke detectors in the ceiling which had all been tested just one month before. The repairs cost £2.6M.

 

I am not particularly at one with Billy Graham’s Arminian theology but can I repeat this quote from him as he was touring Britain during this time (quote). ‘Billy Graham said that he believed in the theory of divine retribution. When asked about the Minster fire he said, “This event served to shake people from their apathy and caused them to consider what the Bible really does have to say about life and God.”’

 

Can I ask just a few of the questions posed by the destruction of York Minster:

 

• Why should it be York out of all the towns and cities in the country?

• Why should it be York Minster out of all the high buildings in that city?

• Is the date that it happened, three days after Bishop Jenkins’ consecration, significant?

• Is it supernatural that lightning should come from a completely clear sky?

• Why should this particular lightning produce no thunder?

• Why was it that the lightning conductors designed to nullify a lightning strike were totally powerless?

• What was that ‘sword-like stab of fire’ from on high?

• Why did the smoke detectors not sound the alarm?

• Why were the Fire Brigade unable to do anything to save the building?

 

I will leave you to draw your own conclusions, but for me what occurred must be more than just mere chance.

 

At the time of Amos when God did similar sorts of things He held the people responsible if they would not listen and respond. In a recent Bible Study in Hosea 5:15b: we read that God uses such things to bring people to account, ‘“In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.”’

 

Scripture tells us in Genesis 8:22 that God promises to provide seedtime and harvest, Paul reaffirms that in Acts 14:17, and surely any alteration to that natural pattern, when He withholds the seasons or terrible events occur, is a stark warning to make us sit up and take notice. God is no longer speaking in a still small voice but rather shouting a deafening warning!

 

Notice carefully that God did not paste a banner in the sky informing the Israelites that what He was doing was a rebuke.

 

He sent these calamities and He sent someone to tell the people where they were going wrong, to forsake their evil ways, to repent, and live the kind of lives He wanted using Amos to declare His words. As we know those words went unheeded and the nation eventually went into exile.

 

Nearly three thousand years later again God still does not paste a banner in the sky informing us that what He is doing is a rebuke.

 

He sends these calamities and also tells us where we are going wrong, to forsake our evil ways, to repent, and live the kind of lives He wants us to using the Bible to declare His words. As we know this largely goes unheeded in our day as well. What will happen remains to be seen.

 

I would suggest that the extrapolation is this. If what happened at Amos’ time was sufficient warning in itself for God to expect the people of Israel to know it was Him speaking, and they had no excuse if they ignored that warning, then surely the same holds good for today. God is no different now and He works to His same parameters.

 

In Malachi 3:6a we are told very clearly, ‘“For I am the Lord, I do not change”’ and again in Numbers 23:19a it says, ‘God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it?’

 

I will leave you to think about these things but always with the proviso not to jump to wild and unfounded speculation.

 

Having said that, our Lord did scold the religious rulers for not discerning the signs of the times in Matthew 16:2, ‘He answered and said to them, “When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red’; and in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times.’

 

How do believers recognize these things? It is surely the Holy Spirit which enables them to discern spiritual matters that are incomprehensible to the unregenerate.

 

At the very least, when terrible disasters occur they must surely galvanize us as His people to be ever more prayerful for our nation and its leaders and urge them to repent and return our land to His God-given laws and statutes.

 

Also they must spur us on to live lives that are distinct from the world around us and so give us the right and opportunity to speak of the Good News of Jesus Christ to this fallen world.

 

Let us make sure that we do not fail on that solemn responsibility that God has given to His people. Amen