Does God use “natural disasters” in an attempt to get man’s attention? Does He use them to curse those who will not hear Him? He says He does. His use of “nature” to speak to mankind is not a new phenomenon as Isaiah 29:6 tells us. Here God is speaking to the inhabitants of Jerusalem who refused to obey Him: “You shall be visited BY THE LORD OF HOSTS with thunder, and with earthquakes, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire” which will precede the city’s defeat at the hands of her enemies. In Nahum 1:3 we find that “THE LORD has His way in (uses) the whirlwind and in the storm, and the (storm) clouds are the dust of His feet.” In the series titled “Would God Do That?” I chronicled God’s past actions against sinning mankind in which He used all manner of “natural” occurrences to get His warning message across. I will not repeat the information provided in that series relative to God’s “voice,” which man calls “acts of nature.”

Instead, I will concentrate on recent divine acts that have filled our television screens and internet monitors and have covered the front pages of newspapers and magazines. Severe storms hit the American Midwest this past spring, doing incredible damage to the land which Americans and much of the world depend on for food production. For this reason the American Midwest has been called “the breadbasket of the world.” On May 1 heavy rains caused the Mississippi River to overflow its banks, causing catastrophic flooding throughout much of the nation’s agricultural heartland. This came less than two months after heavy rains flooded more than 1 million acres of planted farmland. AccuWeather estimated that recent flooding in the Midwest caused $12.5 billion in economic losses, making it the greatest agriculture disaster in U.S. history.

Many Americans–churched and unchurched–are quick to point to man-made climate change as the cause of our weather problems. The burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas, wood, etc.), we are told with total confidence, is the cause of all our weather ills. However, a few verses in Deuteronomy 28 will dispel that notion for those who believe God’s Word. Here the Lord promises those who obey His Word that He will bless them with rain in due season and in the proper amounts (vss 1,12). However, the exact opposite is happening. And the burning of natural fuel sources is not the cause. The same LORD that sends rain in due season to those who obey His Words also sends drought and flooding in all seasons upon those who reject His Word, thereby rejecting Him and His Son (Lk. 10:16). We must notice the link between the conditions that are overtaking us and our disobedience to God, which He calls SIN. He is not referring to our “sins” of using fossil fuels, but rather the sins of blasphemy, adultery, pornography, abortion, sexual heathenism, theft, lying, murder, materialism, Sabbath breaking, etc., all of which are summed up in two words: LAW BREAKING (1 Jn. 3:4). God sends “natural disasters” to draw man’s attention to his iniquity (Lawlessness) which Jesus condemns and for which one will be cast into the Lake of Fire (Mat. 7:23).

In this posting we will concentrate on the latest of God’s warning messages to the United States–category 5 hurricanes. Since numerical categorization of hurricanes began in 1971 there have been 34 category 5 hurricanes recorded. A category 5 storm carries winds of 157 mph or higher and cause what climatologists call “catastrophic destruction” which leaves the affected area “uninhabitable.” Of the 34 category 5 storms recorded over the past 48 years, five have arrived during the past four years. In 2005 there were four category 5’s. Between 2003 and 2005 there were 7. Statistics reveal that these incredibly destructive and deadly storms are coming at an ever-increasing rate. There is now talk of the possibility of category 6 hurricanes.

In the distant past some saints talked about and hoped for a nation-wide wave of repentance of sin and a reversal of individual wickedness. The hope was that mass repentance would cause the Lord to stop punishing and start blessing the nation as He promised to do in 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, pray, seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sins and heal their land.” This prayer has, on several recent occasions, been prayed on national television by some of the nation’s top religious leaders. BUT TO NO AVAIL. Why? Because, when voicing that passage of Scripture they conveniently leave out the most important part which commands that man turn from his “wicked ways.” Apparently Americans have no wicked ways from which to turn, so why mention them? With everyone being “saved,” why mention sin? As a result of this slap in God’s face He has simply turned up the heat in terms of death and destruction upon the land and the people. People who do not know what sin is (the transgression of the Law–1 Jn. 2:6) will not confess having committed it and will have no reason to turn from it. The Law, we are assured from pulpit and podium, was “nailed to the cross”–done away with. End of conversation. Because of these Bible “truths,” true repentance leading to God’s reversal of course is not a possibility. We have entered into the time which reflects the way the world was “in the days of Noah” just before God sent the flood that killed every human on earth except Noah and his family. The problem then in Noah’s day was man’s violence. On a more local basis, we can read where God destroyed Sodom, Gomorrah and the cities of the surrounding plain during the days of Lot because of homosexuality. Before He strikes His deadly blow, God always sends His messengers with His Words of warning. These messages, along with “natural” weather upheavals and geographical occurrences (earthquakes, etc.), are designed to turn man to God. In these final days of the age He is again unleashing His fury. However, this time it is not to turn man to Him, but to warn of the inevitable result of man’s ever-increasing sins. The possibility of national repentance no longer exists. God has turned His back on sinning man who has turned his back on Him. From heaven He is sending a “natural” message in which He says, “enough!” He is preparing to take His tiny group of true saints to “their place” where they will be protected and provided for as He sends the Great Tribulation and the Day of the Lord upon the rest of mankind, both the churched and the unchurched. L.J.