Are Deadly Weather Events Pummeling America Actually the Wrath of God?
America has seen some intense weather in recent weeks.
Nearly half the country, including the American heartland, was threatened by a bout of tornadoes, blizzards, and flooding toward the middle of last month.
In early April, a lot of those same areas were under even more powerful tornado warnings and generationally severe rainfall, causing floods and widespread destruction.
All of this still comes as many in the Southeastern United States work to reclaim their lives from a hurricane that wiped entire towns off the map last fall.
The human suffering seen from these events is unquestionably terrible, and many stories of Americans loving their neighbors amid the chaos have since emerged.
But these tempests, tornadoes, and floods raise questions about what role the God who is sovereign over the winds and the waves has played in them.
As mentioned, He is undoubtedly present in the Christians serving their neighbors and countrymen in a self-sacrificial manner with their time, talent, and treasure, meeting both their spiritual and physical needs.
Yet the Bible and the consistent witness of Christian history would also affirm that God himself is sometimes present in the storms as signs of His just and righteous wrath.
There are many accounts in the Scriptures of God using weather to accomplish His purposes and make His righteousness known among wicked peoples.
That ranges from the flood wiping out the entire human race except for eight people, to God judging the Egyptians with sickness and storms, to countless Old Testament battles in which the Creator wields the weather like a weapon on behalf of Israel.
Even in the New Testament era, Jesus calmed storms and walked on the waves.
Psalm 148 instructs the covenant people of God to praise him because “fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy wind” are merely “fulfilling his word.”
Jeremiah 10 lambasts the false idols of the nations, reminding idolaters that when the God of Israel “utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and He makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain, and He brings forth the wind from His storehouses.”
Matthew 27 says that “the earth shook, and the rocks were split” after Jesus yielded His spirit and bowed His head in death.
Clearly the Bible makes no apology for God using the natural world to accomplish His purposes, to proclaim His greatness, and even to judge those who rebel against Him.
The church through the ages, and even in our own nation, has unapologetically recognized such realities.
Puritan clergyman Increase Mather, who was the president of Harvard College, wrote in his “Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences” in 1684 that extreme weather events can be categorized as “remarkable providences.”
“Such Divine Judgements, Tempests, Floods, Earth-quakes, Thunders as are unusual, strange Apparitions, or what ever else shall happen that is Prodigious, Witchcrafts, Diabolical Possessions, Remarkable Judgements upon noted Sinners, eminent Deliverances, and Answers of Prayer, are to be reckoned among Illustrious Providences,” he said.
Modern scholars have affirmed that such baseline beliefs about weather existed in the early colonial worldview.
The book “Eighteenth-Century Environmental Humanities” has a chapter that recognizes the “common colonial New England assumption that God directly intervened in the weather.”
It examined how “a Puritan divine might have viewed torrential rain as a sign of God’s displeasure,” even comparing that mindset to the modern cult of climate change and how climatologists today may instead ask “whether human-induced climate change contributed to the deluge.”
We cannot peer into the mind of God and know for certain that any particular weather event is a sign of His wrath.
We can, however, most certainly know that some of our conduct as a people is wholly deserving of His displeasure.
Consider that many of the heartland states currently dealing with tornadoes have brazenly expanded abortion in recent years.
The people of Ohio and Missouri even enshrined the practice into their state constitutions.
This bout of stormy weather in the heartland may not be a direct result of such decisions to double down on the legalized murder of children.
But in any case, if even the winds and the waves obey the King of creation, then our nation must, as well, or else we can expect His judgment in this life and the next.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
