Is God Just As Sad at Natural Disasters As We Are?

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Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

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We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we'll be seeking to answer the age -old question, is

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God just as sad about natural disasters as we are? Now, I'm sure everyone knows about this at this point, but about a month ago, give or take,

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Hurricane Ian hit the state of Florida, and apparently, I was just reading about this,

01:57

Tim, apparently this hurricane, I didn't know this, it was the deadliest hurricane since a hurricane that had landfall in 1935, so you have to go back almost 100 years to find a storm that was at least as deadly as Hurricane Ian was.

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It was a huge deal, and my parents, they actually live in the state of Florida, and they are fine, they thankfully were able to go further down south and stay with some family there where the storm wasn't really hitting, but they were telling me when they came back that there was significant damage to a lot of the houses and neighborhoods around them, that it was a pretty big deal that I think even that some houses were basically just completely gone, and definitely, you can go and look at pictures and see just the widespread destruction that happened in some of these

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Florida cities where the hurricane hit the hardest. I remember, I saw some pictures, it's basically like a look down a strip of buildings, and basically all the buildings are just, you can tell that they used to be there, but now they're just piles of rubble.

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Yeah, where I grew up in Florida, it's basically been hit by tornadoes twice at this point.

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So you managed to get out just in time, I guess. Yeah, we got out, and if we would have lived where we lived, it would have been destroyed,

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I think, two times now. Wow, and it's funny because you move from there, from Florida, it's been hit by two hurricanes, and then you move to a place that gets hit by tornadoes constantly, right?

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Didn't you almost have your house taken down by one of those tornadoes? Yeah, we did.

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The tornado was really close to our house. It took off some siding and threw some of our stuff around, but it sounded like it destroyed the house when we were in there, but it didn't.

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That has to be terrifying. It was, yeah. The kids are a little bit psychologically damaged still from it.

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They're psychologically damaged from it. Well, I mean, it was weird because we're in the bathroom downstairs, and then all of a sudden,

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I think James Spann was telling us that the tornado was coming our way, just right where we were at.

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So we're in the bathroom, then all of a sudden, all the power goes off, and the broadcast goes off, and then you start hearing the noise a few seconds later.

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And then it sounded like we could hear the wind inside of the hallway where we were at, and you hear the house fall apart, but really it was only the siding that was coming off, but it was pretty intense.

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Yeah, I'm going to be honest, that sounds just totally terrifying. It's pretty amazing to think that there are natural disasters that can basically just destroy everything that you own, everything that you have in your life, and can even kill you, right?

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Yeah, I mean, we had five kids in there in the bathroom with us. All yours.

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Oh, yeah. The most unnerving thing about it was the fact that I had to think, well, who am

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I going to try to hold on to? I can't hold on to five kids. I can't reach around them all.

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And not that it would probably help anyways, but I'm too stubborn to accept the fact that I wouldn't be able to hold on to at least one, but it's just like I held on to Vivian, our daughter, and I'm like, the rest of you, you're on your own.

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So basically all those times that your kids come to you and they ask, hey, if we were all in the burning building and you could only save one of us, you basically answered that question.

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Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I had her mainly, and then I was trying to do the best

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I could, but when push comes to shove, I would have let go and said, sorry, guys. Oh, that's really morbid.

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That's pretty morbid. Hey, what do you do? I don't know what you do. Well, I think, putting all the joking aside,

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I think really what we're highlighting here is the fact that as advanced as we are as a society, in terms of technology, especially as you sort of look back throughout history,

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I mean, we have tools now that they probably couldn't even dream of a thousand years ago.

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And even having made all of that sort of technological progress, there are still things in this world that we basically just,

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I mean, we don't have any control over in any sort of direct sense.

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So we can't, when the tornado comes, I mean, the best we can do is try and build some sort of emergency shelter to shield us from it.

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But even that's not a guarantee. And so it really should humble us in a certain way and help us realize like, hey, no matter how much progress we've made, there are still things that are more powerful than us.

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And so that leads us to this question, is

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God just as sad about natural disasters as we are? Obviously, there's a lot that we have to talk about with this kind of question because I think there's a lot of assumptions made by people that aren't right.

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It's weird. It's like we think about natural disasters in two different ways. We think about natural disasters that happened in the

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Bible one way because normally we're getting some sort of commentary on what's happening behind the scenes with those natural disasters.

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But then when it comes to natural disasters like Hurricane Ian, for example, or like those tornadoes that come through Alabama year after year after year, it seems like even

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Christians who have all of this biblical commentary on a lot of different cases where natural disasters affect nations, we still don't think about natural disasters the same way the

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Israelites would have. A lot of that is the fact that we call them natural disasters.

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So just calling them that seems to imply that there is this thing, Mother Nature, that is operating independently of God, that maybe at best

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God is a deistic kind of God who set the system in motion, set the weather patterns in motion, and now they're just kind of operating in a hands -off way along those lines.

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But that really isn't a biblical view of the way the weather actually works. This idea of natural disasters in general is not a very biblical way of even talking about what we're talking about.

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I know the insurance companies, some of them still refer to these events as acts of God, and we would do better to think about them that way because we don't naturally talk about them as acts of God anymore, and we do talk about them in naturalistic kind of categories.

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It does seem to imply in the minds of many people that these things are just glitches in the program or things that are somehow operating independently of God, or maybe at best

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He made the weather system at some point, but now it's just doing its own thing, and sometimes it has hiccups, and those hiccups can be pretty big problems.

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But yeah, it's not a very biblical way of talking about it in general. What's even more interesting is there are a lot of people who, when they're talking about these sort of events that are happening in nature, they often refer to Mother Nature.

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In one sense, they're just talking about nature in general, and they're sort of personifying nature, but then

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I think what's actually happening there is, at least subconsciously, or however you want to put that, whether they realize this is what they're doing or not, really what you're doing is you're talking about some sort of God.

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Some sort of intelligence. The natural world is inescapably governed by some sort of intelligence, and there's no way to get away from it, and everyone knows that.

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So you're either going to talk about that under the lens of God's providence or you're going to talk about that under the lens of some sort of Mother Nature or something along those lines.

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So it does seem like even in our sort of materialistic society that tries to find some sort of physical or scientific explanation for all of these events, we still speak about them, at least, as if there is some sort of intelligent being who is working behind the scenes, pulling all the strings for this.

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Now, we as Christians understand that God is the one who's doing this, or at least we're supposed to understand that.

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I find myself questioning more and more if Christians actually think that God has control over the weather.

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So I guess let's start there. Does God have control over the weather?

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Yeah, I mean, the biblical God is the type of God that controls everything. So everything in the world is upheld by the word of Jesus' power.

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So God didn't just... He's not a deistic kind of God who just created the world, set the system in motion, and functionally is just hands -off, not really actively involved.

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If Jesus were not upholding the world by the word of His power, the universe itself would simply unravel.

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So God is a sovereign God, and as you read through the Bible, one of the things you find over and over again is that God changes times,

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He changes seasons, He removes kings, He sets kings up, He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.

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I mean, you can just think about some pretty big, significant stories in the Bible that center around these acts of God, or quote -unquote, natural disasters.

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God sees the sinfulness of mankind, that every thought and intention of the heart of man is only evil continually, so He sends a flood to destroy the earth.

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So there's a big example right there of a natural disaster that God used to destroy the earth.

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But the whole story of Jonah is essentially a story of God's sovereignty where at every single point,

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God points... He hurls a great tempest on the sea to threaten to break the ship up that they're in, and then

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He sends a scorching east wind on the land in order to beat down upon the head of Jonah.

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He appoints a plant to give Him shade, then He appoints a worm to kill the plant.

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He appoints a great fish to swallow Him up when He's thrown into the sea. He is sovereign over the roll of the dice at that point.

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But I mean, there's so many passages that you could think about that talk about this thing. Psalm 135, 6 -7 says,

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Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the deeps.

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He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes the lightnings for the rain, and brings forth the wind from its storehouses.

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The biblical God, He causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. So there's just passage after passage to say this kind of thing.

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Amos 9, 6 says, Who builds His chambers in the heavens and founds His vault upon the earth?

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Who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the surface of the earth? The Lord is His name. So over and over again, as you read the

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Bible, you're going to see that God's in control of these things to great detail. It's not just some process that He set in motion that's operating independently of Him.

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He's meticulously sovereign over these things. Right, and it seems really interesting that, you know,

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I mean, some of those passages of Scripture, really even whole books, they're really common knowledge, at least in the

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U .S., and especially in our part of the U .S. Like the flood? Yeah, like Noah's Ark, for example.

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If I were to go out in public and just ask 100 people, hey, do you know what

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Noah's Ark is about? Do you know what happened? I would be willing to bet that at least 90 % of those people would be able to give me some sort of synopsis of what happened.

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It might not be perfect, but they would at least demonstrate some sort of understanding about what happened in that narrative.

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And even in that narrative, you have a very specific commentary on what's happening.

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God tells Noah, hey, I'm going to flood the earth. I'm going to flood the earth.

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That's what God is saying. And so we know that in that example, God is sovereign over the earth floods, and God is what caused it to flood, right?

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And so we have that sort of commentary there, but then when we look at Hurricane Ian, for example, is the first thing that we think, hey, this is coming from God?

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No. I don't think so. I really don't even see many Reformed Christians that are speaking that way, honestly.

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I know that some certainly believe that they are coming from God, but I don't know that I even hear them speaking that way, right?

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Right, right. Yeah, it's very rare that I think anyone will go that direction.

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I mean, the most recent time, I mean, I think I've heard Piper go that way a few times, and he typically does his

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God is sovereign bit when the storms come. I can't remember who it was, the pastor who said that New Orleans, the

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Hurricane Katrina was a judgment of God against the wickedness of New Orleans, but that caused some controversy and stir a few years ago.

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It's been a while now since that happened. But no, most people don't think in those terms anymore.

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Most of them are basically just as naturalistic as the rest of them. In terms of how we think about it, in terms of our first impulses, how we're processing these things,

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I think any time you have any kind of— this is true as it relates to sickness, it's true as it relates to natural disasters.

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We basically just think this is just— if we're going to be thinking in theological categories, we put it in a category of God's just ordinary providence.

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It's just a feature of life in a fallen world, period, the end, and if that, but then it's just almost kind of blind and purposeless and unintentional as we think about it.

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Yeah, which really brings me to another question that is—

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God is the one sending every single natural disaster, right?

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It's not so natural in its origin. Obviously, there's a way to—

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It's not natural, yeah. It's an act of God, right? Right. Obviously, there's a way to scientifically explain, observe what is happening, but then ultimately, who is the one who is sovereign over it?

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Well, it's God, right? We think in those terms because God upholds the world in a fairly consistent way, and so because he upholds the world in a fairly consistent way, in a way that can be measurable, we naturally lean on those scientific explanations as if those scientific explanations are what's primary.

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Right. In the same way that if I were to give an example of my son Roman has blue eyes.

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So he has blue eyes, and if you were to ask, why does

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Roman have blue eyes? Then the vast majority of people, even Christians included, would be basically saying he has blue eyes because his dad has a recessive blue -eyed gene, right?

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Mm -hmm. And his mom actually has blue eyes, and so she got two recessive genes from someone else, right?

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From both of her sides and got it. So he's getting a gene from her and a recessive gene from me and putting that together, and now he has blue eyes.

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So most people are going to think in terms of the genetics of the thing, but then the real answer is, and what's more fundamental and more primary, is that God gave him blue eyes, right?

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Right. But we think naturally in terms of the scientific explanations as it relates to all of these things, and we don't think about the supernatural origin of these things.

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It's more fundamental. So if you were to ask my daughter, why does

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Roman have blue eyes? She would say because God gave him blue eyes, and that would be better. I'm not saying it's wrong to go into the genes discussion.

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It's just more primary, it's more fundamental, and it reflects more of a biblical view of the world. Right, yeah, they're not mutually exclusive.

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They're not, yes. Right, right. Okay, so we've established that these sort of things, ultimately, they're controlled by God, right?

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And I'm assuming when we're saying, hey, God is the one sending these things, he's sending hurricanes, he's sending tornadoes, he's sending earthquakes, droughts, famine, whatever.

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I'm assuming when we're saying those things, if we're saying he's sovereign over that, then we're saying, hey, he's sovereign, he could stop any of them that he wanted to as well, right?

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Yeah, I mean, he could stop them, but then he's the one sending them. Right, yeah.

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So basically, I'm just asking that to say, okay, he decides when they start, and he decides when they stop, right?

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Right, yeah. I mean, he not only decides to hurl it, he decides to hurl that great wind, just like he did in the time of Jonah, but he's deciding to do that precisely where he wants.

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It's going to go in the precise path that he wants it to go. Right, yeah, there's nothing about it that's accidental.

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The Bible tells us that nature— It's going to go in the same path he wants it to go, and it's going to go for as long as he wants it to go, until he wants it to stop.

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Right, yeah. We see in the Bible over and over again, it tells us that nature obeys all of his commands, right?

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Right, so as Jesus came and he calms the winds and the storms, the disciples basically look at each other and say, what manner of man is this that the winds and the seas even obey him?

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Yeah, which has got to be pretty crazy to see in real life. You see the guy get out on the boat, and he just says, hey, cut it out, wind.

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Right. And then it just stops all of a sudden. That would be just mind -blowing.

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Right. Okay, so God controls when they start, when they stop, everything in between.

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He's completely sovereign over all of it. So then the question becomes, okay, well, if it's not just— if hurricanes, for example, aren't just— they're not just natural disasters.

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They're not just things that just happen when they happen. They're not a part of a system that perhaps

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God created, but then there's a glitch in the system or something.

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They're actually just God sending something, deciding when to start it and when to stop it. The question then becomes, well, why?

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Why is he sending hurricanes, for example? Why is he sending earthquakes?

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Why is he sending tornadoes? What is the purpose behind these sort of events?

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Yeah, I mean, it's the point at which a man wants to die, and after that's judgment. So the creation was subject to futility because of him who subjected it in hope of its deliverance.

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So the issue is that God has punished the human race because of our sin, and there's punishment that has taken the form of disappointment that at some point we're going to die.

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We don't know the number of days, but God knows the number of days. But it's pointed out to all of us that we're going to die.

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But then death, pain, suffering, difficulties, trials are all parts of life in a fallen world.

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So God cursed the creation. The creation itself has been subjected to futility because of our sin, because of the human race's sin.

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So one of the things that's happened is that for the woman, that means in pain you're going to bring forth children, which you had some experience with that last week.

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Well, I wasn't the one experiencing the pain. But you have ears. You can hear it. Yeah, yeah.

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My wife, she gave birth to our second daughter last week.

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So that was really exciting. Yeah, but there's obviously a lot of suffering, not even just with the actual birthing part, but even just the nine months leading up to that.

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There's a lot of pain. Pain and stuff, yeah. But then the same thing, the man's work is cursed because the ground itself will be difficult to work.

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You think about the way that the world actually works. Before the fall, there isn't any such thing as a sunburn.

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There's no such thing as lightning that destroys things and everything like that. So we have storms that are part of life in a fallen world.

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We have lightning. There's very few things that are more terrifying than a lightning bolt striking.

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But then that all tells you something about the power of God, the wrath of God, judgment of God.

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All these things are meant to teach you about God's character, that he's a holy God and that he will not overlook sin.

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He sent a flood to flood the earth, and then he puts a rainbow in the sky in order to be his sign of his covenant that he'll never again destroy the earth by water again.

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But the issue is that this is part of life. In a fallen world, these are signs of judgment that God has introduced into creation.

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These are punishments for our fallenness. OK, so they're punishments.

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I guess you're speaking more in a general sense, right? So just the mere fact that there was ever sin in the world, even one time, part of that curse that came along with sin was

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God basically like, OK, now there's going to be...

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There weren't tornadoes before. There weren't earthquakes. There weren't hurricanes.

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There weren't tsunamis. Because those types of events, those are punishments.

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They're meant to destroy. They're meant to kill, right? And so that wouldn't have been...

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And point to God's power. I mean, they're meant to just reveal certain things about his character, that he's just and he's holy, and that these are signs of his wrath that are being poured out on the earth.

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Right, but the main point is basically just to say, hey, they're not necessarily, if we're speaking about natural disasters in general, they're not necessarily tied to any one sin, right?

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I mean, they could be. OK, OK, what do you mean? All right, so Jonah sinned and God hurled a great wind.

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Yeah, that seems pretty specific. And then the people said, on whose account, you know, did this evil come to us, right, essentially?

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So tell us your name, tell us your occupation, you know, where are you coming from, who are your people?

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And, you know, they cast the lots and the lots fell on Jonah and, I mean, the text itself says he hurled a great storm because of Jonah's sin, right?

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So the issue is, I mean, he could do the same thing. There's no, I mean, we don't get the divine commentary on it at every point, so we don't know on whose account this evil has come.

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I mean, it doesn't even have to be one person either. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, like, it can be whole nations, yeah.

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I mean, it could be whole nations. I mean, it could be selective individuals, you know? It could be a hundred individuals that he...

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So, I mean, the Bible says that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

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So what that means is, you know, for those whom He foreknew, He predestined and conformed to the image of His Son.

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God works everything to His glory and to make His people more like Him. So He can make

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His people more like Him by sending a storm His way, and if it takes Him sending a storm their way to make

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Him more like Him, I mean, it could be that, you know, a thousand people respond to that storm by becoming more sanctified, trusting in God more.

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So, I mean, there's no... Like, not only can He send it in general, as a general punishment, you know, on mankind...

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As a part of the fallen world. As a part of fallen mankind, but He could also use that specifically in the life of specific people to, you know, be a specific act of judgment on their specific sin and also be a specific means of sanctification for specific people, too.

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There's nothing to say that He can't be doing all of that all at once in multiple different ways.

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You know, who's going to be His counselor? His ways are not our ways, His plans are not our plans.

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So there's no telling. You get what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. You know, I think there's plenty of more examples in the

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Bible that we haven't even brought up. So another really, really common one is, you know, the plagues in Egypt, right?

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Right. So He sends 10 plagues. Why? Well, pretty much just on the account...

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I guess you could argue that maybe it was on the account of a few different people, but mainly it's just on the account of Pharaoh, right?

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He keeps refusing to let the Israelites go, even when

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God has commanded it. And so they keep getting punished by things that certainly today, if they were to happen, people would probably just say, like, oh, this is just, you know, this is global warming or...

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Producing these frogs. Yeah, these frogs are a part of global warming, obviously.

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You know, anyone who doesn't see that just can't understand these things, and you just need to trust the experts, right?

30:28

But every single one of them was a hardening. God hardened Pharaoh's heart, right? Right.

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In order to do that, but then He did it, the text says, so that He can get glory over Egypt. Right, yeah.

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Romans 9 talks about that. And then not only, I mean, it wasn't just that the

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Egyptians saw it, all the nations saw it, and then their hearts melted away like wax because of this is the

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God who brought the Israelites out of Egypt. So this God humbled the entire, like the greatest superpower that was alive at that time.

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And that had ramifications for His people, right? And it had ramifications for the nation

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Egypt itself, but then for the nations that they were going in to dispossess. And the same thing is true here. You know, when

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Hurricane Ian comes, this is a sign of God's judgment that has broader and further -reaching implications than the people involved, even.

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You know, the nation that it happened in, it also has broader, far -reaching implications all across the entire globe, you know, at this point, with the way technology actually works.

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So God has, I mean, I'm sure He has hundreds of thousands of millions of purposes, you know.

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Right. In one act, to do a great many different things, you know, to reveal

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His character, reveal His power, reveal His justice, conform His people to His image, and maybe even be a specific act of judgment against specific individuals who, you know, it was their,

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He numbered their days, and, you know, He's specifically judging them at that point by sending that specific storm to, you know, take away the gift of life

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He'd given to them. Right. So, okay, if these things, you know, they're a part of this world because we live in a world cursed by sin, right?

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Sure. But then they also happen, you know, they can happen in response to, you know, specific people's sin that are, you know, that's a different sort of, it's a similar category, but it's a different category than just saying, hey, we live in a fallen world, you know, there's going to be suffering, there's going to be death in this life, what did you expect?

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Those are similar categories, but they're not the same category. And basically we're saying, hey, look, the

32:53

Bible gives us plenty of evidence to say that they can both be true, even in the, you know,

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I mean, at the same time, they're not mutually exclusive categories. So that seems simple enough.

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And I just don't even know, you just really can't even argue that point. I mean, the Bible over and over again, shows us example after example, where God is using nature as a judgment against specific people's sin.

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So that seems like you just can't even argue that that is what happens even now.

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I guess the question then becomes, you mentioned, okay, so we get in the Bible, you know, with the 10 plagues, with, you know, the flood,

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Sodom and Gomorrah is another example. With all of these accounts, we're getting some kind of commentary about what

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God is thinking, what his purposes are behind the plans. And you also mentioned that, you know, today, obviously the canon's closed.

34:02

No one's prophesying anymore. So we're not getting that same commentary from God on Hurricane Ian as we are with the flood, right?

34:16

Sure. So how do we, when you look at Hurricane Ian, for example, how do we understand what's happening there?

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I mean, obviously we understand, hey, a hurricane's hit. But then from a spiritual perspective, how do we understand, how are we supposed to look at that?

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I mean, is it right to say, hey, this is for sure a sign of judgment?

34:43

You know, is it right to say, hey, it's for sure a sign of judgment over a specific people? You know, is it right to say, hey, it is for sure not a sign of judgment?

34:54

You know, how are we supposed to look at that? Because I know there's plenty of Christians out there who are going to look at Hurricane Ian.

35:03

And I think you mentioned it with the Hurricane Katrina thing. Now, I guess almost, wow, two decades.

35:08

I think it was Pat Robertson. Yeah, it was Pat Robertson, I think, maybe who said that it was because of the homosexuality that was there and maybe even the gambling or something.

35:17

I can't remember. And you said he got a lot of pushback for that, right? Yeah, he got a lot of flack on that. Just for saying that, right?

35:24

And so obviously it's a scandalous thing to even suggest that some sort of event like this could possibly be judgment on a specific people for a specific sin.

35:40

So how do we look at this from the spiritual angle? Yeah, I mean,

35:45

I think most people, when they think about these kind of things, they only have a category for Job and the man born blind, essentially.

35:53

So with Job, we also get commentary with Job. But then his counselors, his friends, or whatever, come.

36:02

And basically they didn't have a category. Job is suffering. And they thought, well, it must be because of Job's sin that he's suffering in this extreme way and the way that he's suffering.

36:13

So he must be uniquely more sinful than everyone else because of what he's done. And the fact is, he's doubling down on it and saying that there's no known sin that he had at that point.

36:25

And in their mind, that's basically adding insult to injury. He just admitted it, man, so that God doesn't just kill an entire person's family, have all their property robbed and stolen.

36:41

There's a series of unfortunate events that he had gone through, if there is such a thing as unfortunate events.

36:48

I mean, he just went through disaster after disaster after disaster, and they're looking at that and they're saying, hey, come on, what did you do?

36:57

What did you do? You obviously did something. I mean, if you understand back then, as far as I understand,

37:08

I don't know that this was necessarily always correct, but it seems like that was pretty much the only category they really had.

37:16

God is sovereign over all these things, and he does these things as a curse, right? Yeah, but I don't know that that impulse is any better than the one we have now.

37:29

Right, right. What I'm saying is, I don't know the impulse we have now is better than that.

37:34

I would say that's probably more biblical than where we're at now. To assume, hey, this is probably a punishment.

37:42

Yeah, so for most of human history, people thought, even in scholarship, you see a big historical event, and what you would try to do is you'd try to interpret it through the lens of God's providence.

37:57

You'd try to interpret God's providence in that way, and that would be part of a paper that you would write, what would be some of the divine factors that could factor into this specific event.

38:09

But we're at a different point in history now where everything is just seen in terms of basically a methodological kind of naturalism, so we don't even factor in God's sovereignty and God's attributes and character into these kind of things anymore.

38:25

But what I'm trying to say is, yeah, at that point, they more naturally thought, if anything bad happened, it must be that God's trying to show you something, and now we don't think that at all, right?

38:36

Right, yeah. There's no lessons to be learned in our mind from God's providence whatsoever.

38:41

In fact, it's inappropriate to ask. And I would say that that's probably a worse state to be in than what they were in, is to say that there's nothing you can learn from this.

38:49

It's like, what in the world? And I think

38:55

I agree with you with that, but then basically it seems like what you have to own then is, you mentioned the man born blind, right?

39:05

And the Pharisees were... Doing the same thing Job's counselors were doing. Yeah, they were doing the same thing.

39:11

They were assuming, okay, this man must have done something. He must be uniquely more sinful than we are because he was judged in this way.

39:19

Right, and Jesus rebuked them for that. Right, he rebuked them for that, basically saying it was neither his sin nor his parents' sin that caused him to be born blind.

39:28

He was born blind so that God would be glorified in the process. And he says something similar to that with the

39:34

Tower of Siloam incident, where essentially what he says is, on those 18 whom the

39:41

Tower of Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who live in Jerusalem? But then notice what he says to them.

39:48

He says, no, they weren't. They weren't worse offenders. But then he also says, and this is something that people miss, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

39:58

In other words, they didn't get anything they didn't deserve. Right, yeah. It's not like they were sinless.

40:05

Right, right. So anytime any of this happens, you can't say God has done you anything wrong, right?

40:11

Now what you can't do in any of these situations is in any kind of simplistic way say, well, it must be that these people are worse sinners than anyone else, which is why

40:23

God would do this. You can't say that. But then on the other hand, you can't say, and this is the opposite error that people are making, you can't say the opposite error, and that is, well,

40:35

God didn't have anything to do with that. And in taken in its crass form, you have our title question,

40:40

God's just as sad about this as we are. Right. He could do something about it, but he can't. His hands are tied, man.

40:47

What do you want him to do? That isn't true either. So the issue is it may be a specific act of judgment on specific people.

40:56

It may not. You don't know, right? But what you should ask is in what way, like if you're a

41:03

Christian, you should ask in what way is this helping me to be conformed to his image? And there may be a lot of different ways that God could be doing that.

41:11

But you may not be able to, in the absence of some sort of divinely authoritative explanation, you may never really know with any absolute confidence why any individual thing happened.

41:24

But that doesn't mean that there aren't lessons to learn from it, and it doesn't mean that it's just blind, purposeless evil that's just random.

41:35

Like God is doing this intentionally. He has any number of purposes that he may not explain to us in this life or the next that he's using this evil for, this natural evil for, right?

41:47

And so the issue is you can't know for certain either way.

41:55

But what we've done is we've said, well, just because I can't know confidently, I don't want to be in a situation where I'm Job's counselor, so therefore

42:02

I'm just going to basically say it has nothing to do with any of that. It's like, no, that's not right. It could.

42:08

There could be a bunch of Jonas in that city. You don't know. You know what I'm saying?

42:14

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I guess basically you're saying, okay, you can't be the person who says, okay,

42:25

I see Hurricane Ian coming. I know for sure that this is

42:32

God's judgment over these specific people for this specific sin, right?

42:38

Because then what you're doing is you're speaking for God, right? Without having received any sort of communication from him about that, which is a big deal if you read through the

42:52

Old Testament, right? If you prophesy wrongly or falsely in the name of the Lord, that's a big deal.

42:58

Go look up what the punishment for that is. But then on the flip side, it's not – what were you going to say?

43:07

Yeah, I mean, I think you need to be very careful. With what?

43:13

With that kind of thing, right? With saying, hey, it's a sign of judgment? We're saying you know why in particular.

43:21

I wouldn't say that absolutely you can never say. I want to say you need to be very, very careful. So for instance,

43:27

I mean, if Russia nukes us, right? Right. Why did it happen? Well, because God decided to make them nuke us.

43:37

Sure, but isn't it related to all the same -sex marriage stuff that's happening?

43:44

Isn't it related to the sodomy? Isn't it related to the transgenderism? Isn't it related to the abortion holocaust?

43:51

Meaning if America gets overthrown at some point, there are signs of judgment that any society – there are signs of judgment that any – like nations rise and fall.

44:08

And there are things that God says that he will come in judgment against if a society goes down certain roads.

44:17

Does that make sense? Yeah, Sodom and Gomorrah, like the prime example. Yeah, Sodom and Gomorrah. Yeah, so you have

44:23

Sodom and Gomorrah. God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because their evil was – Because they weren't hospitable. Yes.

44:31

They were showing bad hospitality to those angelic messengers and all that.

44:38

But yeah, I mean, so the issue is there are signs of – like you can look through the Old Testament and you can see what are the things that – the levels of evil, like the iniquity of the

44:49

Amorites was not yet complete and all that. But what are the signs of judgment that God looks at that he will say, at this point, once depravity reaches a certain level,

44:59

I'm going to come into judgment. So let's say America were to be overthrown. From the perspective of history taking the long view, you could look at that and you say, hey, they rejected

45:10

God in their thoughts, right? They burned in passion for one another. Men with men committing shameless acts.

45:16

They dashed their little ones on the rocks in order to appease the

45:24

God of self -reliance and materialism, right? So you can write that story of God's providence at some point, right?

45:34

Right, right, yeah. So if we go under at some point, it's like, yeah, we're all addicted to porn, right?

45:41

We're all killing all of our babies. We're all – we don't even know – we've gotten so evil that we can't even figure out what the difference between a man and a woman is at this point, right?

45:49

So yeah, we deserve it. And then if finally the shoe drops and we're conquered, it's like, well, that's been building for a long time.

45:59

And it probably had something to do with all that, right? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of factors that go into that.

46:06

I mean, even just thinking about what sin does. I mean, even just putting aside the

46:13

God's judgment externally part.

46:18

I mean, there's a lot that – like sin affects you as a person, right?

46:23

And so when you have leaders that are actively encouraging sinful behavior, I mean, you're going to be affected by that, right?

46:31

You're going to be scared all the time, right? Sure. You're going to be – you're going to make stupid decisions because you're a sinful person.

46:41

I mean, basically what I'm saying is there is like – sin makes you stupid.

46:48

Right, right. So imagine like the drug addict guy who's been in the rock band his whole life and it's drug, sex, rock and roll, women, prostitutes, all that stuff, right?

47:00

Like it's all that. And then at the end of his life, he dies of the drug overdose or whatever, right?

47:07

Right. It's like, well, was that God's judgment against his sinful lifestyle? Had God had enough of it?

47:13

Well, yeah, I guess so. I mean, it's not – so what I'm trying to say is like God at some point he has enough with it, right?

47:23

And he's done with it and you can see all the signs. And sometimes that's clear and – I mean, sometimes it's clearer and sometimes it's vague.

47:32

And I just think we need to be really careful, right? Right. So I mean, I think at some point the historians will tell the story of our demise and they'll know the signs that precipitated it because of the signs that the

47:45

Bible mentions precipitate the fall, just like you've done with the Roman Empire at this point.

47:51

Do you know what I'm saying? Mm -hmm. So you can tell the – You can look at all the steps and say, okay, like as a

47:56

Christian especially you can say, okay, look, they were indulging on all of these and all of the sexual immorality.

48:03

They were worshiping false idols, all greed, right?

48:09

Yes. And so you see all those things. And we can say – I mean, we do say these things.

48:16

We do say, hey, like God removed them, right?

48:21

God, yeah, God removed them. And it's – no, I mean, I just – I think you have to be very careful. You know, be very careful and be very modest about what you're saying and just put it out there as humbly as you can.

48:42

And then, I mean, I think time has a way of sorting these things out better than other times.

48:49

Does that make sense? Okay, yeah. So basically, like I was saying earlier, you don't want to be the person who is coming out and who is saying – like Hurricane Ian, for example.

49:02

We'll use that because it was pretty recent. You don't want to be the person who comes out and says

49:08

Hurricane Ian was for sure a judgment on either those cities in Florida, the state of Florida, or the

49:15

U .S. as a whole. All the voter fraud corruption that happened in the last election. Yeah, yeah, because of all of the voter fraud corruption.

49:22

You can't say that, right? Because then – I mean, if you're going to say that, then, you know, like that specifically, you know, then you need to have a lot more evidence.

49:35

And it can be convenient, you know, the sin that you're pointing out. And, I mean, I'm not saying that there wasn't voter fraud.

49:41

I'm saying that that was it. You think that was it, you know? Right. That's a very specific thing.

49:46

That's a very specific scenario. It's the mind of God, you know, and I would be very cautious about that.

49:52

So you can't do that, but then at the same time, it's not any more helpful to be the person who says, well, no, this is definitely not a sign of judgment.

50:02

It has nothing to do with – yeah. Right. Well, it's obviously judgment. Like, naturally, you know, the category of natural evil is a category of judgment.

50:11

It's just, you know, not necessarily so specific and personal judgment at times, right? Right. And so probably, you know, the best thing to do with a situation like this, when you have a massive hurricane come, totally,

50:26

I mean, destroying lives, right? It's ending lives. It's destroying the lives that people have built for themselves.

50:33

It's probably better to look at those things and say, you know,

50:39

I know that there's a lot of different ways to look at this, right?

50:44

So I know that God gives trials to people that are completely independent of their actions, right?

50:53

Right. So, like, when you look at Job, for example. Now, I think he did, like, at the end of the book, obviously,

51:02

God rebukes him. But the point was to say, like, he's the most righteous man in the world up to that point.

51:11

And then he has all of this stuff, and then it all gets taken away from him in the worst way possible.

51:19

He's experiencing suffering like probably no one else has up to that point. And it's not because of his sin, right?

51:27

It's because God is demonstrating his power. He's demonstrating his authority. So we know that God gives trials to people and that those trials are meant to perfect our faith, right?

51:40

So we know that that happens. But then we also know, I mean, you can just read all of those accounts in the

51:46

Old Testament, for example, or the New Testament and see God does actually punish people for sin. And one of the ways he punishes and judges people and nations is by using these sort of natural disasters, right?

52:00

And so when we look at the— Well, think about Jonah. Yeah, think about Jonah, for instance. Like, God sends a storm for the sole purpose of getting

52:08

Jonah's attention. But then it wasn't just that Jonah was the only one affected by it.

52:13

Right, yeah. Like, all those mariners were affected by it. But then not only—so yeah, it was specifically for Jonah, but everyone else was affected by it.

52:22

And then at the end of the narrative, then essentially they're the ones who were offering sacrifices and vows to God.

52:33

So God used it for his glory and for their good in that way, too. So it was a trial for Jonah.

52:40

And it was an act of specific judgment, if you want to put it that way, for Jonah, but not for them.

52:46

But then they still—God still used it. He uses any one thing in multiple different ways.

52:52

And so you don't want to discount it. You don't want to, at the same time—I think what people are very sensitive about is, like, if you can see that there's a hurricane coming into a state and it's going down a very specific path, right?

53:05

Then you can't go, well, everyone in that path is uniquely much more wicked than everyone outside of that path, right?

53:11

It's like, well, okay, fair enough, fair enough, right? So whoever gets their house destroyed—

53:16

Well, we can argue with that. Yeah, no, I don't think you want to do that. But then you don't want to say that a few of those people couldn't be—

53:23

Right, yeah, it seems like— God's time for them to go because their iniquity was complete in His eyes, you know?

53:30

So, okay, using that—I think that's a helpful example to think about Jonah and the sailors, right?

53:36

So God's sending one storm that affects multiple people. And for Jonah, it is a sign of judgment, right?

53:46

Because he's actively disobeying God. Well, it's a sign of judgment for them all. It's a sign of judgment against Jonah's actions in particular.

53:54

But then the rest of them were sinners, too, and this is a more general sign of judgment that was reminding them of their sinful state in general.

54:06

Right, but then speaking in terms of specific sin— It was Jonah's evil on whose account this evil came to the rest of them.

54:15

Right, and for the rest of them, it's more falling into that category of a trial, right?

54:21

Well, I wouldn't say it's a trial for them because they're not believers. Okay, but it does bring them—I don't know that it necessarily says that they end up becoming believers, but they at least start recognizing

54:34

God as God. Yeah, I think it was a sign of judgment that God used to bring them to repentance.

54:42

So he is at least demonstrating his authority, right? I think the reason that they start recognizing him as God is because basically the minute they throw

54:55

Jonah overboard, it stops. So they're looking at that and saying, okay, there is a

55:01

God out there. He's revealed himself through creation, right? Romans 1 tells us.

55:07

And he's done that specifically to us right now, and so we need to acknowledge him as God.

55:14

So perhaps it's not a trial, but it is at least drawing them to him to some degree.

55:21

Yeah, it means God used to get their attention. And so would you say probably the most helpful way for Christians to look at this is to say that God—with Hurricanian, for example—

55:31

God is probably using Hurricanian as a sign of judgment for—certainly he's using it as a sign of judgment over sin in general, but then he's probably also—it's definitely likely that it's a trial for some that he intends who might not have any specific sin that he's judging, but he is testing their faith to make them more dependent on him.

56:01

He's also probably using this sort of event as a judgment over specific people for specific sin that I cannot name because I am not

56:12

God, right? And so when we look at these things, we need to understand that, hey, these are affecting—especially at a scale like Hurricanian, you're talking about thousands and thousands of people who all lead different lives, who all have their specific issues, who all have their specific areas where they are being faithful if they're

56:34

Christians, right? And there's not a one -size -fits -all answer outside of just the, hey, he's punishing us for general sin with the curse that came with sin, right?

56:49

Yeah, it's just a category I think we should all—we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss, right? Right. You may have a guy who's cheating on his wife or something like that, and God sends a storm and kills the wife, kills his family, destroys the home, and he's saying, he's weeping, and this is because of me.

57:13

And then you have a lot of genius evangelical types who will come along and say, oh no, it's just—God's just as sad about this as you, you don't have to feel guilty over it.

57:22

It's like, no, this is a judgment on my sin. It's like, maybe it was.

57:28

I mean, what do you do with that? You say you repent, right? Right.

57:35

And if you can't get a specific sin out of your mind and you're associating this calamitous event with this thing, it could very well be that God's using that to get your attention.

57:45

I'm not going to be the person to come along saying he's not. I'm not going to say he definitely is either, but it's something to consider, right?

57:51

Right. So he does bring conviction. So that could be the

57:56

Holy Spirit convicting you about some specific thing you need to turn from. Yeah, so basically what we're saying here is essentially, hey, you do need to have a category that says, okay, when the natural disaster comes, it's coming from God, God's the one sending it, is there sin in my life?

58:16

Am I Jonah? Am I the Mariners? Right. Basically, that needs to be in the thought process somewhere when you're thinking about something like Hurricane Ian.

58:31

You need to ask yourself, hey, is there sin in my life? Is there sin in my community that this could be in reference to?

58:41

Is there sin in my nation that this could be in reference to? Yeah, you think, am

58:48

I Egypt? Am I Jonah? Yeah, right. Am I Egypt here? Am I Jonah here?

58:54

Am I Lot living in Sodom and Gomorrah here? Right. Which character am

59:00

I? And there's a lot of different characters. I can be any of them. I can be any of them. Yeah, yeah. And so I think what the vast majority of Christians do is say that the only character you can be is the man born blind.

59:13

And it's like, no, you can be Jonah. You could be Egypt. You could be

59:19

Lot. You could be the man born blind. You can be Job. You could be a lot of different people in this.

59:29

So just broaden out your perspective of this event, and that would be helpful.

59:37

Okay. Last question. Yep. What would be more effective at stopping natural disasters, climate change legislation or repentance?

59:51

Emphasis on more effective at stopping. Yeah, I mean, the climate change stuff isn't going to help.

59:59

I mean, I don't know that – certainly, natural disasters ramp up at times in the presence of sin, but then they are a feature of life in a fallen world.

01:00:09

So I don't know that if we repent perfectly as a people or a nation, we're going to be completely spared from all these things in general because they are just general – there are general signs of God's judgment too.

01:00:20

But I don't think you want to give him reason to turn you into Egypt either, right?

01:00:25

Right, yeah. For sure. So if you repent, you may not get as many plagues as Egypt got.

01:00:32

And if you harden your heart, you may. You may get a few more. Yeah. Okay.

01:00:38

Well, fair enough. I think that's a good place for us to end on this conversation.

01:00:45

I'm glad that we finally got to talk about this one because I do think this is sort of a neglected category for a lot of people when it comes to thinking through hurricanes, thinking through tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, all of these things.

01:01:00

It really seems like people are incredibly closed off to the idea that it could possibly, maybe, perhaps be, among many other things, a punishment for sin at the same time.

01:01:13

So hopefully that's given you guys listening a lot to think through and a lot to apply practically as you observe more natural disasters, more hurricanes, tornadoes, and whatever.

01:01:27

Because I've personally seen a lot of people, especially people who lean more on the left side, who are claiming that these things are due to climate change, for example.

01:01:40

And they're due to this or they're due to that. And I want people to know and we want people to know that there is a spiritual explanation for these sorts of events going on.

01:01:52

And it's not as simple as just saying, hey, if we stop driving as many cars, then we won't have as many hurricanes.

01:02:00

It's not that simple. And God's made it plain that it's not that simple. And we don't need to be scandalized when people say or even suggest that this could be a punishment for sin.

01:02:13

So a lot to think through there for you guys. And hopefully you can sort of wrap your head around what we're saying because this really is pretty simple if you read through the

01:02:25

Bible fairly. And you just think about these things like the flood. You think about Sodom and Gomorrah.

01:02:32

You think about the ten plagues in Egypt. You think about Jesus demonstrating his control over nature, over storms, for example.

01:02:44

Because those are the same things that are happening now, right? Not necessarily frogs coming or locusts, but certainly that happens throughout different portions of the world.

01:02:59

And the same mechanisms are in place from a spiritual view. It's not like hurricanes now have a different reason for coming just because they're not in the

01:03:10

Bible. The hurricane Ian isn't in the Bible, so we can definitely write it off as not punishment for sin.

01:03:17

Because we're not getting commentary on it like those other accounts throughout Scripture.

01:03:23

It hasn't changed. It's the same reasons God has told us how those prior events work.

01:03:32

And then we can take those prior events and say, hey, let's apply that to the things that are happening now.

01:03:38

Which is what we do with every other topic that you study in Scripture.

01:03:45

You look at how it applied to them. You look at the commands that are given. And then you ask yourself, how can I apply this to myself in my own life now here in the 21st century?

01:03:54

So a lot to think through there for you guys. Again, we thank you for all the support that you give us week in and week out.

01:04:00

And letting us just come on here and talk about these different things and help equip you guys.

01:04:06

So hopefully it's been helpful for you guys. And we look forward to having you on the next one. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed.

01:04:13

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01:04:25

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01:04:35

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