Book of Acts Part 9

Acts 2 and the Day of Pentecost

Alright, so you'll note that Acts chapter 2 is where we were in the day of Pentecost, and last Sunday for our Bible study, we were pointing out the fact that Peter said on the day of Pentecost, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for the promises for you and for your children.

So we began to crack open the topic of baptism, of course today is the baptism of Christ, and so I invited you all to put questions into our comments, into our chat, so that we could answer any questions along the lines, because baptism is one of these things where there's so much false doctrine running around and it's spoken so authoritatively without any biblical text to back it up, that there's a lot of confusion regarding baptism, and if you want to know what Lutherans believe, it's really simple, we just believe what the texts say.

Our theological position, our doctrinal position regarding baptism is very unelegant, but already looking at some of the questions, we'll do some biblical work, I'll point you to a document that I've written that will also answer one of the questions that comes up.

So let's see here, Lily in the UK, she says, I have a question about the time between someone repents and comes to faith and the actual baptism, do they have the gift of the Holy Spirit while they wait for their baptism or do they receive it then?

The Holy Spirit, Faith, and Baptism

So the answer to the question is actually found in Ephesians chapter 1, in fact let me do this, I'm going to just pull this up in its context so we can see this fully, Ephesians chapter 1, and let's, so let me, here's our context, in him, in Christ, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who are the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

Then watch this, in him you also, when you heard the word of the truth, the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and you believed in him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. So here we have a text that legitimately says that anybody who's a believer in Jesus Christ has the Holy Spirit, true, okay?

And then you'll note, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory? This is most certainly true, okay? But this doesn't take away from the fact that Acts 2 also says that water baptism is also an agent by which people receive the Holy Spirit.

I know it seems a little odd, and so I, yesterday in the first, not the first one, the second Aletheia service, somebody asked a very similar question, and I asked the gal, I said, have you ever seen a three-legged stool?

And she said, well yeah, I have one of them over here in my house. I said, so I asked her, I said, which of the three legs holds the three-legged stool up? And she kind of looked and went, well, they all do.

And I went, right, okay. So the idea then is that so many people, when we talk about the means of grace, they want to kind of think in exclusive terms, one against the other or whatever. But I would note, as Christians, we need all of them.

And so, we don't take any of them away. We don't sit there and say, well, Ephesians 1 13 says that when you believe you receive the Holy Spirit, so we don't need to be baptized. Yeah, that's not how this works.

Okay, so let me explain. So in Acts chapter 2 then, okay, which is where we were studying, okay, we got to this part, so when they heard this, this is the crowd there on the day of Pentecost, they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and they said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?

And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins. In the Nicene Creed, which we confessed today, I believe in one baptism for the, what, remission of sins.

So baptism delivers what it says here, and this is what the church has believed, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So the answer is yes, and then you got to note that in the book of Acts, the day somebody believes in Christ is also the day that they're baptized.

That's a good practice. I don't know why the church has fallen out of that practice. It's just crazy to me that we don't baptize people on the same day that they believe, but so they come to faith, they're also baptized, there is no in between time for the baptized and the believers.

They're all the same on the same day, right? But notice he says this, he says, be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

All of these are promised in baptism, and then you'll note then the promise is for you and for your children and all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. So the question then, there's a follow-up question then regarding infants.

When does infant baptism become a thing? Answer immediately, because the biblical text says that the promises of baptism are for adults as well as for children. And then let me hunt this down really quick here.

I'm going to have to hunt this down and see if I can open this up in my PDF acrobat. Hang on a second here. Earliest, hang on a second here, why is this not doing this? Find, no, find, why is that doing that?

Baptism, earliest Christians. Okay, hang on a second here, I gotta hunt this down. I think that's going to bring that up. Okay, and let's see here, what is all this new stuff? Hang on a second, my apologies, you know that my Adobe acrobat has updated it and wants to let me know about all the new features like e-signatures and things like this, and their AI assistant, I'm not interested.

Okay, if you have a copy of this, if somebody can hunt down the address for this and put it into our chat, that would be great. But this is from my, I put this together more than 10 years ago now, I think, hang on a second here, 2013.

Yeah, so 12 years ago I put this together, what the Bible teaches about baptism and how the earliest Christians understood these biblical texts. This, in fact, let me do this real quick, I'm going to see if I can hunt this down real quick and put it at the link in the chat if somebody hasn't already done it, hang on.

Let's see here, do I want to go here and piratechristian .com and let me hunt this down.

I got you, I'll paste it.

You got it? You got it? Okay. Okay, perfect. Thank you, Stephen. I appreciate your speed and efficiency on that. Okay, let me come back to you here then. Okay, so you'll note that people will claim that infant baptism is a false practice that was created by the Roman Catholics and all this kind of nonsense.

It's just patently false. So our primary text on that, like I've already pointed out, is Acts 2 that says the baptism is for you, the adults who were present at the Day of Pentecost and for their children.

And then what happens is I put this document together that talks about all the clearest passages regarding baptism and what's fascinating here is that there is an account that is written from 253 AD and what happened is that, so in the writings of the Church Fathers, infant baptism is not really mentioned very early on at all and there's a reason why and that is that it was practiced.

It's an apostolic practice that goes back to the time of the Apostles. But what's fascinating is that one of the first times that infant baptism is mentioned is from a letter from Cyprian of Carthage to a fellow by the name of Phidous, okay?

And Phidous was a presbyter, so he's a pastor, and he had come up with a novel idea and here's his novel idea. He decided that no infant should be baptized until they are at least eight days old, that they should wait because in the Old Testament young infants, infant boys, were circumcised on the eighth day after they were born, so we need to wait until infants are eight days old before we baptize them.

So in 253, this is one of the very first instances that we have of infant baptism being mentioned and it's notable as to how this goes down. So watch how this works. As to what pertains to the case of infants, you, Phidous, okay, said that they ought not to be baptized within the second or the third day after their birth, that the old law of circumcision must be taken into consideration, and that you did not think that one should be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day after his birth.

In our counsel, it seemed to us far otherwise. No one agreed to the course which you thought should be taken. Rather, we all judge that the mercy and grace of God ought to be denied to no man born. If in the case of the worst sinners and those who formerly sinned much against God, when afterwards they believe the remission of their sins is granted and no one is held back from baptism in grace, how much more then should an infant not be held back who having been recently been born has done no sin except that born of the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of that old death from his first being born.

For this very reason, does he, an infant, approach more easily to receive the remission of sins because the sins forgiven him are not his own but those of another. And so, one of the very first times that infant baptism is mentioned in the writings of the church fathers goes to 253 AD, and you're going to note that Phidous came up with an idea and said, we need to wait to baptize infants until they're eight days old.

And he was asking Cyprian of Carthage and other bishops what they thought, and they thought he was nuts to wait eight days. And notice they didn't sit there and go, wait, what? You're baptizing infants?

What are you thinking? Okay, so the idea then is one of the reasons why there is so little written about infant baptism in the writings of the church fathers is because it's a practice that goes all the way back to the apostles.

And so, when it first shows up, people aren't sitting there going and saying, you can't baptize infants. Instead, Cyprian of Carthage is arguing that you need to baptize them as soon as possible, contrary to Phidous who wanted to wait until the eighth day after they were born.

So, you know, just a careful reading of the writings of the church fathers makes this very clear. So, all right, let's see here. Eric says, slam dunk for infant baptism. Why would they be writing about this if there was never a church practice from the beginning?

So glad that God brought us to the true doctrine. Exactly, Eric. Okay, let's see here. Let me, okay, now let me back up because we're doing questions here. Okay, so we talked about that. Jen Bennett pointed out that her husband and her son believed in Christ even before they were baptized.

Baptism as Promise, Not Human Decision

Now, let me get to the second part then of the question. If God, if the Holy Spirit is given, if the Holy Spirit is given in baptism and the Holy Spirit is given when somebody believes, why, you know, why should people be baptized then if they already believe in Jesus?

The answer is, for very good reason, is that our faith has to be grounded in something. And so, you'll note that in the evangelical world, people try to ground their faith in their conversion experience.

I know I'm a Christian because I had a born-again experience. But the problem is, is that those born-again experiences are pretty sketchy and oftentimes don't provide any solid basis for whether or not you're a Christian.

And so, the idea then is this, is that you'll note that those who are baptized have promises that can't be taken away from them because it's grounded in something that God has done for them. Okay, so in Acts 6, we read these words.

Now, in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, hang on, not Acts 6, Romans 6, my head is not as clear as it should be because of this illness. Anyway, what should we say then? Are we to continue in sin so the grace may abound?

No. Okay, that's just silly. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried, therefore, with Him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

And so, here we have these baptismal promises and it's more than just the promise of the Holy Spirit. Yes, the forgiveness of sins, receiving of the Holy Spirit, but you're going to note here, there's the promise that all who've been baptized have been baptized into Christ's death, into His resurrection.

As we read in the sermon in Colossians 2, we're buried with Christ, raised with Christ, our sins are canceled, all these things are promised. And so, the idea then is this is done to us. God has come to us from outside of us, extranos is the Latin phrase, and He's done these things to us and for us.

And so, as a pastor, I oftentimes will meet with people who are struggling and they'll sit there and go, you know, I'm the worst Christian ever, how do I even know if I'm really a Christian because I'm struggling with this sin or that sin or the other sin or whatever?

And I always come back to, well, you're baptized. Well, yeah, so what? What do you mean so what? That's like everything. Christ has made you His own. You have been buried with Christ, raised with Christ, your sins have been washed away, you've been gifted with the Holy Spirit, all these things have been promised to you, you're a Christian.

And the reason why you're struggling with sin is because you're a Christian. Non-Christians don't struggle with sin, they just enjoy it. There's a difference, okay? And until, of course, their sin begins to impact them negatively in their physical health, and then they have to modify their sins, right?

You get the idea. But all of these promises are there for us in our baptism. So, although somebody believing is truly going to heaven, having been baptized, they have all of these gifts promised them and they can't, it's not based on their decision, it's based upon what God has done to them.

And then their faith can hang on those promises and be strengthened, especially in times of trouble and doubt so that they don't despair. Coming back then, they're able to say, hey, I'm baptized. And that's kind of Paul's point in 1 Corinthians 6.

Such were some of you, but you were washed, okay? And so, being able to come back to that baptismal reality is a vital part of our being able to hang on to the promises of God that are given to us and our faith to be able to cling to those promises because they come to us from outside of us, okay?

All right, let's see here. Joseph Saylor says, I have a friend who is high up in the Southern Baptist Church and has published books, very educated. I do not understand how one can read the scriptures and study them so in-depth and still come to the conclusion of believer's baptism.

How do you think that they get there? They get there basically from a selective reading of the biblical texts. And this is, I'll be blunt, I used to be a believer's baptism guy and I can remember how I would arrive at this conclusion.

In my mind, I just took solace in the fact that, well, in the book of Acts the only people who were baptized were those who heard the gospel and believed. Therefore, believer's baptism. But it's just not true.

The issue is that it doesn't actually work out and when you focus in on those passages to the exclusion of the rest of scripture, then you come to incorrect conclusions. So, if you come back to my document, What the Bible Teaches About Baptism and How the Earliest Christians Understood These Biblical Texts, the issue is not that the book of Acts doesn't say that believers, people who heard the gospel and believed were baptized.

It does, but that's exactly what you would expect because the gospel's going out and it's reaching an unbelieving world. There were no Christians prior to Pentecost except for 120 of them and a small group of people in Jerusalem.

So, the issue is that what often happens is that people basically, they hear bad arguments from people that they trust and they just continue with those bad arguments and then they've got a big problem and that is they don't know what to do with the rest of the biblical passages.

And that was part of my problem when I was in Nazarene in an evangelical is that I just didn't know what to do with the other passages. So, when I was in Nazarene and I was attending Concordia University, Irvine, which is, again, thank you Walter Martin for telling me to go there, but so I'm at a Lutheran university and my college buddies who were my classmates, who were all Lutherans would say to me, hey, Rose bro, yeah, what's baptism for again?

Oh, baptism is the thing you do to show the world you've made a decision for Jesus. And they would toss over a Greek New Testament to me and say, hey, show us that in here. I'd say, well, it's in there.

And they say, well, where is it in there? I don't know. It's in there somewhere. They said, well, what about 1 Peter 3 that says baptism now saves you? I says, well, it doesn't mean that. And they go, well, it doesn't mean what it says?

And I said, no, it doesn't mean that. They said, well, what does it mean? I said, I don't know what it means, but it doesn't mean that. And then they say, well, we didn't tell you what it means. We just told you what it says.

It doesn't matter. Okay. So, in the opening of this document, I kind of tell a story and let me kind of regale you on the story because this kind of answers that question that's being asked here. How do people get to this point?

It's through this, it really has to do with kind of a myopic focus. They miss the forest because of a tree. You know, they'll sit there and go, well, in the book of Acts, the only people who were baptized were believers, therefore believers' baptism to the exclusion of the rest of the texts.

Okay. So, let me tell the story here in the preface to this document. And again, the link is in our chat. On my radio program, I regularly point out the fact that the scriptures nowhere teach the popular American evangelical belief that baptism is a sign to the world that you've made a decision to follow Jesus.

As a result, I receive a lot of emails asking me about and challenging the Lutheran doctrine of baptism. Recently, I received an email from a fellow who boldly asserted that there are no biblical passages that teach the Lutheran doctrine of baptism.

Okay. This guy sent me an email to that effect. I promptly sent my critic an email containing the clearest passages in the New Testament regarding baptism, along with a note that said, here are the clear passages from scripture regarding baptism.

You tell me what baptism does, its purpose, according to these scriptures and who it is for. I believe exactly what these passages say. That's what I told him. And so, here's the list of the verses that I sent this guy in this email.

Acts 2, 38 through 39. Peter said, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. You will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, the promises for you and for your children, all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

Romans 6, 3 through 5. Do you not know that all of us who've been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Colossians 2. In him also you were circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.

Acts 2, 22, 16. Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name. Titus 3, 4 through 7. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

1 Peter 3, 21 and 22. Baptism, which corresponds to this, that's the flood, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels and authorities and powers having been subjected to him.

And then in John 3, Jesus says, truly I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Now, upon receiving these verses, my critic promptly sent me a response in which he attempted to demonstrate that none of the texts that I sent him are actually speaking about water baptism, but about something else.

By the way, I call that a dehydrated hermeneutic, okay? It's not about water baptism. Well, actually it is. Every one of them is referring to actual water baptism. To this, I responded by sending him a lengthy email, which took me some time to compile, containing quotes from the writings and the sermons of the earliest Christians and how they understood those biblical texts.

It's important to note that these citations were written long before the usurpation of the Bishop of Rome. So, I specifically wanted to go into the earlier writings of the Church Fathers prior to the Bishop of Rome becoming the Pope, the central figure of Catholicism, okay?

So, this was long before that. And the corruption of the Church as a doctrine that occurred in the Middle Ages. Upon receiving these excerpts from the ancient Church Fathers, my critic pronounced every one of the Church Fathers to be heretics.

When I pointed out the fact that none of them were heretics and that all of them are considered to be Orthodox preachers and apologists of the Christian faith, and that some of them were martyred for their confession of Christ, I received one final email.

In it, my critic amended his criticism. He no longer claimed that there are no biblical passages to support the Lutheran doctrine of baptism. Instead, he said that my problem, and by extension, the problem of the earliest Christians, is that we take these biblical passages literally.

And that's, if that's what somebody wants to accuse me of, your problem, Rosebud, is you take these passages literally. Guilty. Okay, 100 percent guilty. So, and then the document that you're about to read was created in order to share with you the clearest passages.

So, you get an idea plus more of what I sent the guy in the longer email. But when I work with my catechumens, my catechism students, I always say, listen, we're going to, if we create a confession of faith regarding what baptism is, and we only use biblical language, these are the texts to do it.

So, the issue then, Joseph, is that what happens is that Baptists believe that they've come up with a doctrine, and the doctrine is that baptism is merely a symbol. It is an ordinance. It is something that the Christian does in obedience to Christ's command to be baptized, and God does nothing in it, okay?

And then it's only for believers. The issue is that that's based on human reason, human logic, and isolated passages of Scripture that do not take into consideration the entirety of what God's Word teaches regarding baptism and who it's for and what it does.

Or I should properly say what God does through it. And so, and then it also then has a real problem, and that is that it contradicts what the church historically has understood regarding these, what baptism is and does.

I'll give you some examples here. So, from this document. So, Acts 2, 37 through 39. Again, we're working our way through the book of Acts. When they heard this, they were cut to the heart. Peter said to the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?

Peter said, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, the promises for you and for your children. So, here's how the earliest Christians understood this text.

So, here's the Epistle of Barnabas, written no later than 74 AD, and Barnabas being the travel companion of the Apostle Paul on some of his missionary journeys. It's the same exact guy, okay? Here's what Barnabas writes in his epistle, which is a first-century document.

Regarding baptism, we have the evidence of Scripture that Israel would refuse to accept the washing which confers the remission of sins and would set up a substitution of their own. Observe there how he describes both water and the cross in the same figure.

His meaning is, blessed are those who go down into the water with their hopes set on the cross. Here he is saying that after he has stepped down into the water, burdened with sin and defilement, we come up out of it bearing fruit with reverence in our hearts and the hope of Jesus on our souls.

So, you're going to note here, Barnabas says that baptism, like Peter said in Acts 2, confers the forgiveness of sins. The Shepherd of Hermas, a first-century document, says, I have heard, sir, said I to the shepherd from some teacher, that there is no other repentance except that which took place even when we went down into the water and obtained the remission of our former sins.

He said to me, you have heard rightly, for it is so. Okay? Irenaeus, the great apologist who wrote against the heretics, Contraheresy, in his book, Contraheresy, chapter 21, he writes, and when we come to refute them, the Gnostic, we shall show in its fitting place that this class of men have been instigated by Satan to a denial of that baptism which is regeneration to God and thus to a renunciation of the whole Christian faith for the baptism instituted by the visible Jesus was for the remission of sins.

Okay. This is Irenaeus writing against heresies, right? Okay. The demonstration of the apostolic preaching from 192. Now, faith occasions this for us even as the elders, the disciples of the apostles even have handed it down to us.

First of all, it bids us to keep in mind that we have received baptism for the remission of sins in the name of God, the Father, and in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was incarnate, died, and rose again in the Holy Spirit of God.

This baptism is the seal of eternal life and the new birth unto God that we should no longer be sons of mortal men, but of the eternal and perpetual God. I would note that the earliest Christians had a very, very, very high view of baptism, but it wasn't erroneous.

It was based upon what the biblical texts say about it. And then, of course, I read to you already what Cyprian of Carthage wrote to Pastor Phidous regarding his idea about waiting until infants were eight days old to have them baptized.

That's just, you know, he said, no way. You've got to baptize them immediately. You know, that's that. And then, you know, again, in the Nicene Creed, we believe in one baptism for the remission of sins.

So, now, let me, so Joseph, I'm hoping I answered your question. I may have rambled a little bit, but I'm known to do that from time to time. I'm just saying. Let's see. Jeff says, oftentimes people are taught the wrong thing by a person they greatly respect.

That's exactly correct. Okay. Selina says, a friend of mine attended a church where it was taught that baptism saves is equal to salvation and that baptism is necessary for salvation. This made her so upset that she left the church.

In her opinion, salvation takes place when you believe in Jesus. At the same time, I have not learned enough about baptism. Now that I have learned more, it seems biblically correct to say baptism saves.

Baptism Saves and the Flood in 1 Peter 3

Okay. So, Selina, here's the thing. We don't say things like that apart from Scripture. We gotta stay within the biblical text, but we do have a text that says that baptism saves. That doesn't mean that somebody who believes in Jesus and isn't baptized isn't saved.

That doesn't actually work. But here's what it says in 1 Peter. And so, we actually have a passage that says this, for Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that He, watch this, He might bring us to God.

Okay. So, who's bringing the bringing? God's bringing us. Okay. Being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in which He went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison. So, this is talking about Jesus' descent into Hades or hell.

And because they formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through water. And then we hear in verse 21, baptism, which corresponds, and I would note the Greek word here antitupon, baptism, which is the anti-type to the flood.

The flood is the type and shadow. Baptism is the substance. That's the point that Peter is making here. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you. It legitimately says that. Here in the Greek, now saves you baptism is what it says.

And baptism is the subject of the sentence that's in the nominative. Sozo is our verb, saves, and who does it save? It saves you. Okay. When does it save you? Now is what it says. So, we actually have a biblical text that says baptism now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, that's called a bath by the way, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

So, Lena, it is absolutely true that we actually have a biblical text that says baptism now saves you, which makes sense if you think about it this way, is that since Peter says baptism is a washing of regeneration, or Paul says it's a washing of regeneration.

Peter says it's for the forgiveness of sins and the receiving of the Holy Spirit. Paul says that in our baptisms, we're buried with Christ, raised with Christ, we're circumcised by the hand of Christ.

So, if our sins are washed away, we've been regenerated, and we've been given the Holy Spirit, and we've been united with Christ in his death and his resurrection, are we saved or are we damned? We're actually saved.

So, it's the delivery mechanism for what Christ accomplished on the cross. It's one of the delivery mechanisms. The other one is the preached gospel. It's not one or the other, it's both. So, if somebody hears the gospel and they believe, they're saved.

We don't sit there and say they're not saved. They still need to be baptized so that they can have the assurance of all the promises that are given to the baptized, because as Christians we need them.

But it's not as if that, you know, if they got into a car accident before being baptized that they would be lost forever. That's just not true. But at the same time, you know, if somebody says, well, I already believe in Jesus, I don't need to be baptized, now we've got a problem because Jesus says we are to be baptized, okay?

And we're in need of all of those promises that are granted and gifted to those who are baptized. So, okay. So, Jeff says, I echo Lily's question. Can you explain how the gospel of God being preached is the power of God to salvation, the hearer believing and confessing Christ, and at the same time to schedule and perform the baptism?

Is this person not saved before his or her baptism? Okay, so I already answered the question, good. Unrelated question in regards to natural disasters and other tragic events like the one we just witnessed, how shall we look at these in light of God's will because He is the one who sends calamity and it is in His will, but at the same time we pray for it to cease.

Natural Disasters, Repentance, and Christ's Return

So, when we pray for calamities like this to cease, we're actually praying for Christ's return. Jesus tells us how to pray, what our attitude should be regarding calamities. Let me do a quick search here.