Monday, September 1, 2008

Mullings on God's will in hurricanes and politics

I just keep thinking about it. It makes me very sad. The God, THE God, the God of all things, the one and only, the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the God who made the world and everything in it, God who deserves the worship of every one of His creatures, God who puts up with those who hate Him, who is even good to those who hate Him, God who hears the prayers of those who acknowledge Him, is forgotten and ignored in our sophisticated time. He is also ignored by those who seek Him where He has not put His name, in the false religions. He has only put His name on His word, and on the people of the Bible. Then there are people who claim to be Christians who aren't. Then there are the Christians, those who do belong to Him, who nevertheless don't live up to our calling, who don't seek Him as we should, who don't obey Him as He has clearly told us to in His word, who remain stupid in the face of acts of God when of all people we should know what is going on because of all people we should know HIM.
So this hurricane comes and maybe we'll hear a call to pray, but when do we hear a call to humble ourselves and repent in sackcloth and ashes for the sins that have deserved the hurricane? The sins of the CHURCH, mind you, even before the sins of the nation: we're to turn from OUR wicked ways it says in 2 Chron 7:14.

So the twin towers of New York are demolished and people say "God bless America" but very very few would admit that it was God's doing. Of course it was the doing of Muslim jihadists, but isn't God in charge of the actions of Muslim jihadists as well as everyone else? They are merely instruments in God's hands, just as the Assyrians and the Babylonians and other great empires were God's instruments of judgment against God's own people as reported in the Old Testament.

I heard I think four sermons that acknowledged that 9/11 was God's judgment, only because local Christian radio sought them out and played them as a series well after the event, and I doubt there were many more than that across the nation. Everybody else was saying God wouldn't do such a thing, or if He did there is no way to know why, and so on. But what a myopic view of it, what a shame if such things are said by people who call themselves Christians. Of course we can't know why in the case of individuals, the persons who died in such catastrophes, that's only for God to know -- He takes the unrighteous AND the righteous according to His own timetable. In the case of the attack on the World Trade Center He showed more mercy than judgment -- there were so few who died compared to the numbers that could have been killed, and there were many miracle rescue stories, all heartening signs of His mercy in judgment. But if we know the Bible at all we ought to be able to surmise that God is saying something to the nation as a whole in such a disaster. But it seems we don't. The church is backslidden, out of touch with God. The church needs to repent.

So we're sitting and watching for Gustav to hit. I for one am not going to pray that God will deflect the hurricane. He's not going to let many be killed, there's been time for a massive evacuation, but a nation that doesn't give God the glory, that doesn't recognize its own sins, that doesn't repent and seek His face, doesn't deserve to be spared His judgments. Elijah prayed for famine on Israel because they had left their God for the pagan demon god Baal. America has done the same. I wonder if anything will turn us back? How hard does God have to hit us? Or will we just continue to say it's only Nature, just a matter for government and human ingenuity to deal with?