What the Bible says about Disasters

Ecclesiastes 11:3

Many unanticipated things will occur in life. When a cloud passes overhead, we do not know if it is going to rain or not. If it dumps all its water on us, it may wash the farm away, something we did not plan for. Solomon is giving a warning: "Risk what you have and give your all to living a life by faith. Be generous and enthusiastic in doing it, but also be aware that there will be adversities. Things are not always going to go the way you would like them to go."

Unanticipated events will occur. We cannot control the difficulties of life. Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and huge thunderstorms happen. We have to be ready with the right kind of mind to anticipate and deal with these events.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Ecclesiastes and the Feast of Tabernacles (Part 2)

Amos 4:6-11

God's people were busy making money, accumulating things, and practicing their religion. But God was also very busy—sending famines, droughts, blights, locusts, epidemics, warfare, and perhaps earthquakes in judgment for their unrighteousness (Amos 4:6-11). He hoped they would heed these “minor” warnings before He sent the rod of His anger against them (Isaiah 10:5).

Rain fell on one part of the country, but not on another. When it rained, it rained too much, causing floods. In other places, just enough rain fell to deceive the people into feeling hopeful—that it was not so bad after all.

This process is evident in the United States. Natural disasters—insurance companies call them “acts of God”—seem to be growing more frequent and more intense, killing many and causing billions of dollars in damage. Floods ravage some areas of the nation, while drought kills crops in other areas. After a year or so of good rainfall, California frequently falls back into drought conditions—only to suffer from floods the next year! Fires rage over thousands of acres after periods of drought, destroying forests and homes. Sudden earthquakes, storms, tornadoes, and extreme temperatures destroy homes, businesses, and lives.

It never gets quite bad enough to send the nation into an actual tailspin, but it is just enough that, like the Egyptian Pharaoh of the Exodus (Exodus 7:13-14), we continue to harden our hearts. We fail to repent. If the unrepentant attitude continues, the “natural” disasters will intensify, bankrupting the nation economically. Since money seems to be the nation's foremost god, the true God will hit where it hurts most. Most Americans have become so far removed from God that they lack the eyes to see and the ears to hear the warnings He sends. Educated in a system that fundamentally denies God, they lack understanding.

Blind to God, they interpret His warnings as natural events—just nature running her course. Most view an earthquake, flood, or drought as “nature doing her thing.” Rather than heed the warning and repent, Americans turn to their other false gods—science and technology—to bail them out. “Design better levies to protect us from floods,” they cry. “Seed the clouds to produce more rain.” “Engineer stronger buildings to withstand more powerful earthquakes.” “Science will someday give us the ability to predict—even stop—earthquakes.” Americans have eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear (Isaiah 6:9-10; Matthew 13:14-15).

In these disasters, God is saying something quite different—something vitally important. He is warning the people that they have a responsibility, and if they fail to live up to their covenant with Him, He has the power to correct them so that they will repent. So, in fairness and mercy, God lays a simple choice before them: “Therefore thus will I do to you, O Israel; and because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” (Amos 4:12). Their choice is either to face their sins and repent or face the wrath of a just God.

To bring about His purpose, God is active in His creation, especially among His people, whether physical or spiritual Israel. “If there is calamity in a city, will not the LORD have done it?” (Amos 3:6). Is God involved in our lives? Do things happen by chance to God's people? This world would have one believe God is not really aware, that He does not care or even exist. But He says, “I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the LORD, do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7).

Is God involved? “Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father's will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matthew 10:29-30). Do we see God working in our lives? Events do not happen accidentally to God's people, of whom God is very aware. He is deeply concerned and thus extremely involved.

John W. Ritenbaugh and Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Prepare to Meet Your God! (Part Three)

Amos 4:6-12

What are we to think of the disasters this nation has been experiencing of late? If they are not direct signs of the apocalypse, what are they? What God says to Israel through Amos.

Between verses 7 and 12, God mentions sending them drought, blight and mildew, locusts, plague, military defeat, and divine punishment for sin, yet after every disaster, Israel still refused to repent. So, God warns them in verse 12 that He would bring on them a major judgment—His wrath, their Day of the Lord, a day of “darkness, and not light” (Amos 5:18-20).

This passage suggests that the disasters we have recently seen are warnings to the nation that God is aware of its sin and the people's drifting from Him. He is trying to get their attention so that they realize that they need to repent and return to Him. These disasters, then, are precursor judgments and threats, prods to motivate repentance and a restored relationship.

The ultimate judgment of God comes later, and Christ's return happens according to the prophecies recorded in Scripture. They are straightforward—not esoteric, not discernible only to biblical numerologists or experts of some mysterious Bible code. The prophecies will be fulfilled in real, visible, unmistakable events.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
The End Is Not Yet

Matthew 24:7

Verse 7 presents a challenging proposition regarding prophecy and God's active involvement in the governance of His creation. Jesus can say this only if God will use His powers purposely to increase the number and intensity of these plagues in a variety of places, even where they are not normally experienced. No study has ever shown that these things increase or decrease according to uniform law, especially in widely divergent places. Jesus intimates that they will increase unusually and rather suddenly.

Psalm 147:15-20 shows God actively exercises His sovereignty daily in good times and bad. His involvement is not limited to the big disasters we call "acts of God," though they are certainly included:

He sends out His command to the earth; His word runs very swiftly. He gives snow like wool; He scatters the frost like ashes; He casts out His hail like morsels; who can stand before His cold? He sends out His word and melts them; He causes His wind to blow, and the waters flow. He declares His word to Jacob, His statutes and His judgments to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any nation; and as for His judgments, they have not known them. Praise the LORD.

Regarding "acts of God," Amos 4:6-9, 13 provides arresting insight into why God uses them to intervene in the affairs of men:

"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 . . . . 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.

Is God involved? Certainly! He does these things to grab people's attention and turn them back to Him!

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Sovereignty of God: Part Four

Luke 13:1-5

Jesus says that disasters should be a wake up call to repent to all who survive! What we should focus on is our own guilt, our personal failure to live up to God's standards. Those who died are just like us! They paid the price for their sin—death. Do we deserve any less? Only by the grace and mercy of God do we live and have the opportunity to seek forgiveness, repent, and grow in character.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Christian Reaction to Terror