On March 11 one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history shook the north coast of Japan, resulting in a tsunami that swept as far as 10km inland. Thousands of buildings have been affected, and the death toll is estimated at over 10,000.
Who can forget the tsunami in 2004, one of the greatest displays of nature's wrath in modern history, killing over 230,000 people in fourteen countriesthe The tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004, triggered by an undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean off Indonesia, sent giant killer waves from Sumatra to Somalia that wiped out whole communities and flattened beachside hotels.
Haiti shook not long ago under the wave of a powerful earthquake, devastation followed, the loss of life abounded, diseases broke out, and those living among the ruins would tell you they were experiencing hell, but honestly they were not. Chile shook soon afterwards and the same verdict could have been assumed.
A few weeks back New Zealand and now Japan have experienced the same horror, and those living through the horrible ordeal that we all view over the internet or on television could honestly say the same. After these all incidents a question came all over…. Did a loving God do that which we are viewing? Did a loving God cause all the pain and the suffering those people are going through?
Why has God sent so much pain to those people in Japan? It is the great, eternal question—the one we all ask sooner or later. Some will object to the form of the question. They will say that God did not “send” the earthquake. If you prefer to say that God “allowed” it, I think it comes out pretty much in the same place.
An earthquake is terrifying because we never think about the ground giving way beneath us. If a hurricane comes, we look for shelter, but what do you do when the ground itself begin to fall away? There is no place to hide.
And so I thought about it this way. What if in one sudden moment Gurnee, or Waukegan or Chicago ? What if a city that had been there in the morning was now gone, the buildings collapsed, and the entire population dead? What if that happened to South Bend or Charleston or Clearwater or Midland? Think about that. A city of more than thousand suddenly dead and gone. That’s what happened in Myanmar and China, Haiti, and Japan
No wonder THE WORLD wants to know what God was doing. It’s an honest question. Why has God sent so much pain to those people in Japan? I have been thinking about it myself. A number of answers might be given.
A. The disasters might be a sign of the Second Coming of Christ.
It has been more than a week since Japan was hit with a devastating earthquake and tsunami, and yet only now are religious celebrities beginning to come out of the woodwork to give a spiritual explanation for what occurred. Talking to Newsmax TV, Rev. Franklin Graham confirmed that, indeed, these recent natural disasters could signal the Second Coming of Jesus.
Opening with a quick recap of this century’s disasters– Hurricane Katrina, earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, the tsunami in Indonesia– the host asked Graham just how worried the world should be that these are the end times. Graham replied that the signs are clearly there, that wars and famine and earthquakes are precisely what would indicate the end of the world. “It would be like labor pains,” he explained, “and as a woman gives birth to a child, those labor pains start intensifying with more frequency.” While he clarified that he didn’t know for sure if this was the end of the world, he saw a good argument for it.
For example, between 1986 and 1996 (incl), a period of 11 years, there were "just" 15 earthquakes listed by USGS of magnitude 7.0 or greater. This is not markedly different (albeit a slight decrease) from previous (similar periods) of 20th century, where an average of about 18 might be expected. But between 1997 and 2007 (incl), a period of only 11 years, there were 99 earthquakes with magnitude 7.0 or greater : This is more than a six-fold increase on the previous similar period - and is a stark increase on any earlier decades in 20th century too. The trends in nature here, particularly from 1997 support the wider realisation of prophesy about the "End Times", namely that an increase in earthquake activity is a pre-requisite for the "second coming of Jesus Christ" foretold in the bible. It does not indicate how close we are to this event, but suggests it is not too far away.
B. The disasters might be God’s judgment for particular sins.
Note that I said “particular sins.” The problem here is in explaining why the cyclone struck the Irrawaddy Delta and not the Bay of Bengal, or why the earthquake struck Japan and not Libya.
Are we to suppose that the cyclone and earthquake came because the people of Myanmar or the Japan were worse sinners than others? Jesus seemed to reject this sort of moral calculus in Luke 13:1-4 when he discusses the Galileans who were murdered by Pilate and the 18 men who died when the tower of Siloam fell on them. Does their death prove they were worse sinners? The answer is no. Or as the NIV has it, “I tell you, no!”
That they were sinners is proved by the fact of their death since death is always the result of sin. But the circumstances of their death do not prove they were worse sinners—only that they were sinners.
It is always tempting to look for a connection between our sins and terrible disasters. That happened after 9/11 and it happened after Hurricane Katrina. One prominent minister alleged that Katrina hit New Orleans because there was a Gay Pride parade planned for the Monday after the hurricane hit. I write as one who believes in a moral cause and effect in the universe so I am willing to go so far as to say that any tragic event may be part of God’s judgment on human sin.
But there is an important qualification. When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, he declared his judgment and then carried it out (Genesis 19). We have no way of being that certain today. Absent the voice of God, we are on shaky ground when we claim the ability to explain why bad things happen when they do, where they do, and why they don’t happen all the time or in every circumstance.
And that really comes to the heart of the problem. Why here and not there? Why did this child survive and another one die? Why was this man’s home destroyed while his neighbor’s was spared? Why did the tornado hit this town and not the one five miles away? Or on a different level, why do two men get the same cancer—one lives, the other dies? Does anyone claim the ability to explain these things?
III. The disasters prove that we live in a fallen world.
This answer rests on solid theological truth. When asked why God allows disasters, most Christians go back to to some version of the freewill argument. I’ve often heard evangelical leaders on Larry King Live use this argument. It goes something like this. When asked why God created a world filled with hurricanes, pain, suffering and death, the freewill argument answers that God didn’t create the world that way. When God created the world, he made it perfect in every way. There were no earthquakes in Eden. And no suffering people waiting for days for help to arrive. No one died there either. The pain and suffering we see around us didn’t come from God. So how did things get so messed up?
The answer goes back to Adam and Eve. God gave them the choice (the freedom) to obey him and be blessed or to disobey and be punished. Unfortunately, they made the wrong choice. As a result, sin and its attendant suffering entered the spiritual DNA of the human race. Genesis 3:17-18 also notes that creation itself was put under a curse by God because of Adam’s sin. Death entered for the first time.
Pain and suffering became man’s constant companion. Paradise gained became paradise lost. Nature became red in tooth and claw. Instead of the lion and the lamb lying down together, the lion became the lamb’s mortal enemy. That’s why Romans 8:22 says that all creation groans in the present age, waiting for the day of redemption. Adam’s sin didn’t just impact him. It touched all of us. “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).
Imagine a school bus with enough seats for every man, woman, boy and girl on planet earth. Such a bus would be thousands of miles long. And let’s suppose that Adam is the driver of the bus of humanity. When he drove the bus over the cliff of disobedience, we all went down with him. And we all ended up crushed and broken on the jagged rocks of God’s judgment.
The world is the way it is because we humans messed it up. The cyclones and the deadly earthquakes would not exist were it not for human sin. Human sin accounts for the violence and mayhem we see all around us, our tendency toward hatred, unkindness, lust, a critical spirit, selfishness, greed, indolence, and our willingness to point the finger and blame others for our own problems. If Adam had not sinned, we would not have cyclones in Myanmar and earthquakes in China. But this is not the total or even the final answer. Something else must be added to it.
IV. The disasters call us to be quiet before the Lord. Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God.”
After affirming that God can be trusted even when the mountains give way, the psalmist calls all of us to cease our striving. “Be still” means literally to stop, to cease our frantic going to and fro and simply to rest. It can even mean to be at leisure. As long as we are busy, we cannot hear the voice of God speaking to us. But in the silence that comes after a tragedy, we may know that God is present.
What a rat race we live these days. So much noise, so much rushing around, so many deadlines to meet, so many demands on our time, so many things we want to do, so many things we just don't seem to find the time to do. What a busy world we're living in. It is the silence that is so profound. When Job’s three friends came to see him, they were so shocked that they sat in silence for seven days (Job 2:13). It was only when they started talking that they got into trouble.
When God says “Be still,” this is not the stillness of inactivity, much less the stillness of despair. One writer explains it this way:
When God says, “Be still,” He enforces the stillness of waiting — of watching the
unfolding of ways and the development of thoughts which are as much higher than ours as the heavens are higher than the earth. (E. E. Jenkins)
Very often we will simply not understand why God does what he does, or our knowledge will be incomplete. But in saying that, we also confess our trust that the purposes of God are working themselves out even in the worst things that happen in the world. We are not supposed to have easy answers for questions like this.
This command — “be still” — forces us to think on two things: that we are finite, and that God is infinite. That being the case, we need to drop our hands, go limp, relax, and “chill out.” Christian people ought to “come, behold the works of Jehovah,” (v. 8) that we may enjoy a calm confidence in him who gave us his Son. Sometimes we talk too much when hard times come, as if by talking we will explain the ways of the Almighty. We are much more likely to know the ways of the Lord if we are first still before him.
“Be still and know,” says the Lord. Never is this more needed than when we face a tragedy beyond our comprehension. In silence we learn. In silence we begin to understand. In silence we know.
David Viscott, a psychiatrist, tells us something with which most of his colleagues would concur: that we should listen to our feelings. it’s a sign that we have taken responsibility for our world. Yes, it’s back to that proactive stuff, but he goes on to say, don’t stop there. We need to take time to listen to God.
And what is it that we will know? “Be still and know that I am God.” Not “be still and know the details” or “be still and know the reasons.” As important as those things are, they pale before the knowledge of God himself. It is not in the noise of our own effort that we grow spiritually, but when we are finally quiet before the Lord, then we receive the greatest knowledge of which mankind is capable—the knowledge that he is God.
A lady from Oklahoma named Ruth had an important decision to make. Her income as a substitute teacher was not enough for her to afford living in the apartment she had been renting for a year. Ruth realized that she really did not want to leave her apartment and began searching for a job that would provide enough income so she would not have to move. She considered taking a live-in job caring for an elderly woman, but the family had not decided whether to hire her. Time became short, and she was in a panic.
One day as Ruth was reading her Bible, she came to Psalm 46. Then in verse 10, the psalmist writes, "Be still, and know that I am God." God spoke to Ruth, "Be still! Take your hands off! Relax! I am still in control!"
In the midst of any difficulty, we just simply need to “be still.” So as your world crumbles around you, the call from Scripture is: don’t flinch in faith in God. Stand still — not because of a self-made confidence, not because you are the most composed person in the face of disaster, not because “you’ve seen it all.” Be still because of what you know about God.
Today, issued another warning to elevate the terror alert to high alert to put the nation in a state of readiness for another attack by terrorists. We live at time of high alert when anxiety seems to be running at a fever pitch and yet God gives us a great assurance in our passage today. Even though war and destruction are all around us as seen daily on TV the Lord will ultimately be victorious. God is telling us that despite the seeming instability of the times all we have to do is be stand quietly and watch how the Almighty displays His glorious power.
Prayer: When God says, “Be still and know,” he invites us to linger at the foot of the cross. God’s answer to your pain is not a sermon or a theory or a book you need to read. God’s answer to your pain is a Person. God’s answer is Jesus. Run to the cross and lay hold of the Son of God. Fix your gaze on him whose death has set you free. Embrace him in the midst of your pain. Be still and know that he is God. We find God’s final answer to the problem of human suffering hanging on a Roman cross outside the city walls of Jerusalem. There Jesus is dying for the sins of the world. That man on the cross is God’s final answer to all our deepest questions about the suffering we see all around us. He didn’t simply die with us.
He died for us. The cross sends a message from God to a rebel world: “I will never stop loving you.” The suffering of the world is great, but the love of Christ is greater still. We cannot escape suffering. It comes to all of us again and again, but we must not stop there. The road continues on from our pain into the arms of Jesus. Amen.
