The Lord Has His Way In The Whirlwind

Ok.

Joseph Botwinick

 

I am not accepting your test because it's based on your assumption that God uses natural disasters today the way he did in the OT. God did use disasters in the OT to bring judgment on his people, but we know that because the Bible says He did! There is no way to know that Katrina was some kind of judgement from God.

Once again, I believe God is in charge of nature but natural disasters are the result of man's sin. So even though a murderer has a will and a hurricane doesn't, they are both being allowed to do their damage by a sovereign God.

 

The bible does not say that the tragedies that hit Job were to purify Job. It says that Satan asked God to lift the protection He had given Job.

The bible does not say that God sent disaster upon Job. It says that Satan did, and that God did not stop it.

I do not believe this was some "divine punishment" sent upon these people. I think this is a natural occurence that God chose not to alter or not to stop. There is a very natural pattern to the formation of hurricanes and tornados, and it would be a miracle from God to stop one. God choosing not to give a miracle is not necessarily the same thing as God deliberately causing pain and devastation.

God never altered the weather patterns of the earth. We can track hurricanes in this area for over 100 years. Men and women thought they could change the results. They brought in pumps to build a city at sea level, they built levees to hold back the sea. They learned today that man and science are not God. That doesn't mean God wanted them to build there or that He sent a special disaster upon them.

 

I have images of some of you standing at funerals going, "Well, I don't know what it was, but they did something terrible or God wouldn't have let them die." *Shaking my head sadly*

What baulderdash.

God lets nature be nature.
That isn't a curse from God.

 

Mark,
When Jesus rebuked the wind and sea in the storm, doesn't it seem contradictory to think that God made the storm so Jesus could rebuke it? The storm was part of a weather pattern and God allowed the storm to form. I agree with TexasSky.

 

Really? Are you sure?
Why didn't mankind believe Noah when he told them what was coming?

Joseph Botwinick

 

And yet, none of us have said any such thing. How sad it is that you have to defame us in that manner.

Joseph Botwinick

 

Amen to Mark's thread. God is sovereign and has his way in the whirlwind. As one who lives in Louisiana I can say, this is the Will of a Sovereign God.

 

Mark 4:36-41 (KJV 1611)

Christ rebuked the wind, and he commanded the seas to be calm. Why would he have rebuked it if it was his storm?

God has the ability to send storms (we know this from the Bible- it's mentioned many many times), but not all storms are God-sent. The one that hit the ship Jesus was sleeping in was not God sent. The winds that struck the four corners of Jobs house was sent by Satan (with Gods permission).

I'm not saying he didn't send this hurricane. But I am saying that it's possible that he just allowed it.

As far as God not allowing death, but sending death- that's a little to calvinistic for me.

[ August 29, 2005, 11:53 PM: Message edited by: kubel ]

 

Absolutely.

 

Al Mohler gives a good commentary on this topic:

The Goodness of God and the Reality of Evil

Every thoughtful person must deal with the problem of evil. Evil acts and tragic events come to us all in this vale of tears known as human life. The problem of evil and suffering is undoubtedly the greatest theological challenge we face.

Most persons face this issue only in a time of crisis. A senseless accident, a wasting disease, or an awful crime demands some explanation. Yesterday, evil showed its face again as Hurricane Katrina came ashore on the Gulf Coast.

For the atheist, this is no great problem. Life is a cosmic accident, morality is an arbitrary game by which we order our lives, and meaning is non-existent. As Oxford University's Professor Richard Dawkins explains, human life is nothing more than a way for selfish genes to multiply and reproduce. There is no meaning or dignity to humanity.

For the Christian Scientist, the material world and the experience of suffering and death are illusory. In other religions suffering is part of a great circle of life or recurring incarnations of spirit.

Some Christians simply explain suffering as the consequence of sins, known or unknown. Some suffering can be directly traced to sin. What we sow, so shall we reap, and multiple millions of persons can testify to this reality. Some persons suffer innocently by the sinful acts of others.


But Jesus rejected this as a blanket explanation for suffering, instructing His disciples in John 9 and Luke 13 that they could not always trace suffering back to sin. We should note that the problem of evil and suffering, the theological issue of theodicy, is customarily divided into evil of two kinds, moral and natural. Both are included in these passages. In Luke 13, the murder of the Galileans is clearly moral evil, a premeditated crime--just like the terrorist acts in New York and Washington. In John 9, a man is blind from birth, and Jesus tells the Twelve that this blindness cannot be traced back to this man's sin, or that of his parents.

Natural evil comes without a moral agent. A tower falls, an earthquake shakes, a tornado destroys, a hurricane ravages, a spider bites, a disease debilitates and kills. The world is filled with wonders mixed with dangers. Gravity can save you or gravity can kill you. When a tower falls, it kills.

People all over the world are demanding an answer to the question of evil. It comes only to those who claim that God is mighty and that God is good. How could a good God allow these things to happen? How can a God of love allow killers to kill, terrorists to terrorize, and the wicked to escape without a trace?

No superficial answer will do. Our quandary is well known, and the atheists think they have our number. As a character in Archibald MacLeish's play, J.B. asserts, "If God is God He is not good, if God is good He is not God; take the even, take the odd . . . ." As he sees it, God can be good, or He can be powerful, but He cannot be both.

We will either take our stand with God's self-revelation in the Bible, or we are left to invent a deity of our own imagination. The Bible quickly excludes two false understandings.

First, the Bible reveals that God is omnipotent and omniscient. These are unconditional and categorical attributes. The sovereignty of God is the bedrock affirmation of biblical theism. The Creator rules over all creation. Not even a sparrow falls without His knowledge. He knows the number of hairs upon our heads. God rules and reigns over all nations and principalities. Not one atom or molecule of the universe is outside His active rule.

The sovereignty of God was affirmed by King Nebuchadnezzar, who confessed that God "does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and no one can ward off His hand or say to Him, 'What have You done?'" [Daniel 4:36]. Process theologians have attempted to cut God's power down to size, rendering the Creator as one power among others. The evangelical revisionists pushing open theism have attempted to cut God's omniscience down to size, rendering Him as one mind among others.

Rabbi Harold Kushner argues that God is doing the best He can under the circumstances, but He lacks the power to either kill or cure. The openness theists argue that God is always ready with Plan B when Plan A fails. He is infinitely resourceful, they stress, just not really sovereign.

These are roads we dare not take, for the God of the Bible causes the rising and falling of nations and empires, and His rule is active and universal. Limited sovereignty is no sovereignty at all.

The second great error is to ascribe evil to God. But the Bible does not allow this argument. God is absolute righteousness, love, goodness, and justice. Most errors related to this issue occur because of our human tendency to impose an external standard--a human construction of goodness--upon God. But good does not so much define God as God defines good.

How then do we speak of God's rule and reconcile this with the reality of evil? Between these two errors the Bible points us to the radical affirmation of God's sovereignty as the ground of our salvation and the assurance of our own good. We cannot explain why God has allowed sin, but we understand that God's glory is more perfectly demonstrated through the victory of Christ over sin. We cannot understand why God would allow sickness and suffering, but we must affirm that even these realities are rooted in sin and its cosmic effects.

How does God exercise His rule? Does He order all events by decree, or does He allow some evil acts by His mere permission? This much we know--we cannot speak of God's decree in a way that would imply Him to be the author of evil, and we cannot fall back to speak of His mere permission, as if this allows a denial of His sovereignty and active will.

A venerable confession of faith states it rightly: "God from eternity, decrees or permits all things that come to pass, and perpetually upholds, directs, and governs all creatures and all events; yet so as not in any way to be the author or approver of sin nor to destroy the free will and responsibility of intelligent creatures."

God is God, and God is good. As Paul affirms for the church, God's sovereignty is the ground of our hope, the assurance of God's justice as the last word, and God's loving rule in the very events of our lives: "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, who are the called according to His purpose." [Romans 8:28]

We dare not speak on God's behalf to explain why He allowed these particular acts of evil to happen at this time to these persons and in this manner. Yet, at the same time, we dare not be silent when we should testify to the God of righteousness and love and justice who rules over all in omnipotence. Humility requires that we affirm all that the Bible teaches, and go no further. There is much we do not understand. As Charles Spurgeon explained, when we cannot trace God's hand, we must simply trust His heart.


_________________________________________________

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to www.albertmohler.com. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to www.sbts.edu.

 

The idea that God would send a storm to destroy the lives of those who love and follow Him is so far from the God of the Bible, especially the New Testament, that I can't believe we're even having this conversation. And it's even harder to believe that you guys keep going back to Matthew 5 as a proof text. Matthew 5 says exactly the opposite of the point you're trying to make. Read the passage in context:

" 43"You have heard that the law of Moses says, `Love your neighbor'[n] and hate your enemy. 44But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! 45In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and on the unjust, too. 46If you love only those who love you, what good is that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. 47If you are kind only to your friends,how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. 48But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect."

Not a word in there about God's judgment on the unjust spilling over onto to just. Nothing about righteous people tasting the wrath of God because of their evil neighbors. It's talking about Gods blessing spilling over onto the wicked.

And I can't believe you can't see the sovereignty of God in the order of nature. Using Matthew 5 again, does God cause the sun to shine on everyone? Of course he does. How does he accomplish that? In the beginning, He set the sun in the sky and placed the earth in orbit around it, so that every morning it breaks over the eastern horizon, revealing the gift of a new day. Does God make the rain to fall on everyone, just and unjust? Of course he does. How does he accomplish that? Through the process of evaporation and condensation. So from that standpoint, yes, huricane Katrina was an act of a sovereign God. Because he created the heat, the water, the wind, the ocean currents, and all the complex processes that form a huricane. But not because he woke up in a bad mood one day last week and decided to slam the gulf coast.

From my perspective, God's sovereignty is revealed in a greater way in the order and consitency of nature, than it would be in some random catastrophic natural disaster.

I agree with TexasSky in that I don't see how you could ever offer comfort to those suffering if your idea is that God's desire was that they be devastated and that's he's pleased with their suffering. In fact, if God sent huricane Katrina to punish Mississippi and Louisiana, then wouldn't it be wrong for us to intervene in their suffering with relief efforts? So I trust that your churches will not be doing anything to help out, since they need to feel the full weight of God's judgment.

 

The way I see it, if God permits it, then he has caused it by default. There is no middle ground here between biblical theism and open theism. Of course, the question as to why natural disasters occur remain hidden in the counsel of His will. As Marcia said, only the ones described in the Bible do we have any knowledge of God's reason for such.

And in thinkning of this topic, maybe the question we should ask is not why evil exists, but why does good exist? It's not why do bad things happen to good people, but why do good things happen at all?

 

Joseph,

I meant in regards to this hurricane. lol

 

Mark,

Maybe you should go back and read the text more carefully. God called the attention of Satan to Job stating that God was pleased with Job. You have implied that God was punishing Job. That is not what the bible says.

Job 1:1 (KJV) There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.

Job 1:8 And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?

None of the purification nonsense you talk about.

But, read FURTHER and you may want to get down on your knees and God to forgive you. Seems God was VERY angry at the friends of Job who kept telling Job that this was all a punishment from God.

Job 42:7 And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.

The three friends of Job did what you did. They told Job, "This is God's fault. You sinned and He is punishing you," and that made God angry with them.

The lesson of the day - don't assume you can play God by proxy by deciding why anything happens. It tends to annoy God.