Disasters

Debby... tell me again would you what we talked about the other day....
your insight into how God is using catastrophe to show us ....... ?
I want to remember exactly how you put it.

We learn from scripture that all that God does is good and that all that happens is His decree; we also learn from scripture that He pours out His judgments on the earth. Read Luke 13:1-5. Jesus did not tell those who asked Him about the suffering caused by the tower of Siloam what they wanted to know, but warned that if they did not repent, they would suffer likewise. Hebrews 9:27 tells us that it is appointed to everyone to die, and then the judgment. Acts 17:26 teaches us that our appointment with death has been determined already in God's decrees. So the lesson we learn from the disasters on the earth is that for those who suffered death, it was their time to meet the Judge, whether in Christ or not; but for the rest of us, it is a merciful warning to repent. This is why we should rejoice at the news of such disasters, because we know that they are new opportunities for the gospel to be spread, not to mention the occasion by which God's elect were brought into His presence by their deaths.

I think if more people understood this, it would replace much hand-wringing sentimentality with prayer and serious evangelism. May it be so.