Katrina, Rita, Earthquakes and Tsunamis - Mother Nature or Father God

Question: In a world that is so politically charged and uncertain can we trust that an entire kingdom, yet to rise, could be revealed to us by the use of a symbol, especially that of a beast? Answer: When John depicts both the antichrist and his kingdom with the symbol of a beast, Revelation l7:1f, he is showing us some futuristic series of events that some say is too much to entrust to the uncertainty of a vision, much less a symbol within a vision. This argument is instantly neutralized when we realize that many years before John's vision the prophets had similar visions that are now fully completed, and are now a part of the historical record. For example Daniel saw the rise and fall of four separate kingdoms in two visions that he had himself or interpreted for the ruler in his time. Daniel saw the rise and fall of the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek and Roman empires. One vision was of a man and the other of various beasts, Daniel 2:lf and 7:lf These visions are now part of the past and serve only to prove that God does use such images, they are always accurate and it is time to get onboard if you are going to take God seriously. Question: Are natural disasters the evidence that the end is at hand? Answer: Actually the increase of natural disasters is not the evidence that it is the end. They are the evidence that the end is about to begin. They are those things that signal the approach of the coming troubles and the return of Christ. Jesus put it this way...And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, And earthquakes in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Mt 24: 6-8 Such events then are the precursors to the great tribulation they are not the tribulation in all its fullness, and it's scripturally provided order. You can almost hear the phrase...Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, guess what happened. Question: Are natural disasters, wars, nuclear incidents, and terrorism Gods judgments? Answer: They may be his judgments for our ongoing sinfulness but they are not the judgments spoken of in Revelation. The events that follow the breaking of seven seals, the blowing of seven trumpets and the pouring out of seven vials of wrath are all intervening judgments performed by God alone. Let me be brutally succinct and put it another way. Man does not perform the judgment of man in that day. God glorifies himself alone. Men would only try to explain the judgments away as some inexplicable anomaly or natural occurrence. They would not think it had anything at all to do with their own way of life. They would never admit that their sins had finally come under the scrutiny of an angry God. God has endured centuries of our reasoning and wrangling about whether he would actually intervene and judge our behavior. Not even Christians seem to know that he has given us a many examples and an iron clad guarantee that assures us that he will. In the twenty eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, God gives a list of the blessings that we will earn if we obey him in a mere fourteen verses. In the same chapter he pronounces the things that will befall us if we choose to go our own way, and that takes no less than fifty four verses. Some of the judgments included are madness, hemorrhoids, and blindness. The worn out clich