Are these events messages from God?

After witnessing the destruction of our present hurricane season, one of the inevitable conclusions drawn by many well-meaning and sincere Christians is that these things are messages. They say God IS, by way of magnitude and location of storms, warning us to back off of and away from sinful ways. These sincere and well-meaning Christians will look at current events from specific locations and essentially say that it was no accident that they were hit by such destructive power. My question to these well meaning ones is simple – how do you KNOW that?  How do you know for sure?

Just how would you go about deciphering any messages from God sent by way of storms or earthquakes or volcanic eruptions? What would constitute a message and what would constitute a mere event? Is there a pattern that God would use to do such things? The answer is yes. In the Bible, we can see where God did use natural events for specific purposes. The logical thing to do would be to observe when He used these natural events, who He used them with and why He used them.  Finding the answers to these qualifying factors would give us a reasonable basis to look for a identifying a continued pattern from God with His messages.

What did Jesus say?

One Bible message regarding weather that is loud and clear was spoken by Jesus himself. While teaching us about loving our enemies in Matthew 5, Jesus said that God brings rain down upon the just and the unjust. So, our first message is one of equity – God does not arbitrarily “shut off the faucet” when it comes to those who are out of harmony with Him. Having said that, we also know that he DID one time withhold rain for 3 1/2 years. He did use an earthquake to destroy some evil people. He did destroy Sodom and Gomorrah with “fire from heaven.” How and why did these specific things happen?

They all happened in conjunction with God’s established patterns for using natural events. What was that pattern? Check out our October 9, 2017 podcast, “Are Natural Disasters Sending Us a Message?” and find out. Follow along with us as we identify the whys and the wherefores of God and His use of natural elements in the Bible.  Knowing why He did things then can really help to answer questions about what He is or is not doing now.