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