God’s Wrath Or Man’s Folly?
As with every disaster, there are folks coming out of the woodwork claiming to have had a vision of the New Orleans destruction. Ironically, these things are never made known nationally so that folks might heed the warning or that a citywide repentance could occur like in Nineveh and the calamity avoided.
Others are quick to point out that this happened because of God’s judgment on the sinfulness of the city or certain things that are condoned in the city. While I agree that God’s judgment is on this country rather than His blessing, I still have to ponder this a bit. I would think that the entire West coast would have fallen off into the ocean or be sucked up in a large crevasse from an earthquake first.
Before I go further, some Islamic folks feel that it was the wrath of Allah. Well, I would have to ask who caused the earthquakes that have tore up Iran (4 since 1972 81,621 killed), Indonesia (’04 and ’05 201,000 killed), and Turkey? (7 since 1939 at least 65,100 killed) It would seem that if Allah were punishing America with Katrina then he has punished his folks a lot more. They may not want to credit him with Katrina because it begs more questions than it answers.
Now back to our folk’s assumptions on the cause of the disaster. It was proposed that it was because of a homosexual festival that was to occur that very week that God destroyed New Orleans. Considering there are large homosexual communities in Seattle, San Francisco and LA that also have parades and such plus euthanasia is legal in Oregon wouldn’t these places be higher up on the hit list than New Orleans if God is looking for sin cities to execute His wrath upon? Las Vegas, outside of euthanasia, has all the sins of New Orleans and the Left Coast plus legalized prostitution. A dozen mile wide tornadoes or a huge sinkhole should take care of it.
New York City is surely as evil as New Orleans and they only lost a few buildings and three thousand people. An earthquake could have sunk Manhattan by now, don’t you think? I am not sure where the abortion capital of the country is but I would say that it would be high up on the list. Dallas and Houston aren’t exactly havens of righteousness either. Atlanta is just NYC South. Do we even want to get into the sins of Miami and West Palm Beach? I would say that Boston is not guilt free and on the list as well if the list exists. I hear that there is much evil afoot in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Phoenix and Tucson. Actually, I doubt that there isn’t a city in the country that would not be on such a list. Salt Lake City has some evil in it, for sure. The Boise Boogeyman is alive and well and you thought they only had taters. Your best bet is to move out of the cities if you want to survive.
Yes, God took out Sodom and Gomorrah, but He didn’t much of a trace of them. He took out everyone on the planet except eight people in a flood and we have His rainbow as a promise that He won’t do that again. He has used floods and other “acts of God” to help His people when they were in battles. He will use the forces of nature to defeat the Russians when they come up against Israel during the Tribulation. Yet, with all that I am not comfortable saying unequivocally that God took out New Orleans and the rest of the places as an act of judgment.
For one thing, the earth is dying. It fell when man fell and the perfect environmental conditions which allowed dew to be sufficient to water the earth and humans to live hundreds of years is gone. The deterioration started slowly and then picked up speed after the global flood that was aided by the destruction of the canopy of ice above the earth and changed the earth’s position on its axis giving us the tilt we have today.
We are now approaching the last days and the weather patterns are changing and in some ways becoming more severe. Christ predicted earthquakes in diverse places as a matter of fact not that they were specific judgments upon an area. They are part of the judgment already given when Adam sinned. The earth, yea the universe, began dying and like man it is a deterioration unto death, dying ye shall die.
The “controls” are broken, so to speak and the only reason the earth hasn’t already exploded or imploded is the grace of God. By Him all things consist, are held together, and will do so until He destroys it by fire after the Millennium. Then He will create the new heaven and new earth. During the Millennium, some things will be restored like human longevity, the pacific nature of all animals and the relationship of man with the animals.
Violent weather and earthquakes are the death throes of the planet. As it gets closer to its death they will intensify. It is not global warming or cooling, but global dying that will cause them. Luke 21:11 may be referring to weather changes or other atmospheric phenomena as well as some things we have not yet seen. What we call UFO phenomena may also be part of this prophecy rather than visitation from other worlds. While I don’t believe it to be the interpretation of the passage, an application of this verse may well be the satellite photos of storms like Katrina, which are certainly frightful sights from the sky or heaven. Something like that was impossible at the time of Christ but commonplace today.
God certainly could have stopped it. He could have had it die out in the Gulf somewhere. But if the storms and earthquakes are because of man’s sins He certainly has no responsibility to stop us from receiving the consequences of our sin. Indeed, instead of asking why, we should ask why not worse? The question is not why do bad things happen to good people but rather why does anything good happen at all? There are no good people. Some are just worse than others but we are all sinners.
Who is to say that God did not act and mitigate the damage? We will not know until this life is over how many people could have been killed without His intervention. We don’t know how many miracle stories there are yet to be told. Just because we haven’t encountered a Category 6 or 10 storm doesn’t mean that there will never be any or that Katrina could have become one without God’s intervention. Even if it were an act of His wrath, we may find one day that He exercised great mercy even in the midst of His wrath.
I think the real culprit in this is man himself. Jesus warns about poor choices of building locations.
Matt 7:26-27
26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. (KJV)
If it is unwise to build upon a shifting foundation, how much more unwise is it to build a city below sea level? The place is even shaped more like a lake bottom than a place to build land structures. It should have been made into a lake rather than a city. Seeing that we know of Category 5 hurricanes why was the levee only built to handle Category 3 hurricanes? Why wasn’t there a system designed to allow quick runoff if there were flooding rather than have a system that not only failed to prevent flooding but failed to allow rapid drainage?
Prov 22:3 A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished (KJV)
We have met the enemy and we are it. Sure, the early settlers of the area may not have had the engineering skills to see the problems but somewhere along the line they should have been developed. They could have prevented further development in that area and “moved” the city out from the cereal bowl. The damage and loss could have been mitigated.
Ah, but money is an issue. Someone owned that land and the city wants to use all the land it can so it can generate more tax money. Ignorance and/or greed are as much the cause of this disaster as anything. Sadly, we aren’t going to learn from this. There is talk of rebuilding. Why? What arrogance! There is never going to be another Category 5 hurricane or worse? Do we like death and destruction or are we just dumber than a brick?
People who continue to build houses on the sides of mountains or keep rebuilding in a flood zone are just slap stupid as we might say in the South. Tear everything out of the area and fill up the cereal bowl or turn it into a cornfield or something but don’t make the same mistake and rebuild there as it is. Doing the same thing over again expecting different results is a symptom of insanity. I heard about someone who had already rebuilt their summer home in MS three times and now on the fourth time they have decided to give it up. Well, sanity has finally returned to these people.
If you must rebuild on a beach can you take a hint from lighthouses? They are seldom severely damaged even when the town near them is flattened. Why? They are round. Why not build round houses on the beach? They do the stilt thing on most of them to protect against flooding but a strong wind will hammer flat walls. After all the years of living on beaches and rebuilding we stick with the same old style that gets blown away. That proves we are either insane or immensely ignorant! Forrest Gump could have figured this out by now but I digress.
In conclusion, since no Jonah rose up and ensured that everyone in the city knew that God was pronouncing judgment on the city so that they had an opportunity to repent I am not ready to say that it was God that sent it specifically to wipe out New Orleans. The storm was most likely just a normally part of the death throes of the planet. If God sent it, I thoroughly believe that as bad as it was it was not as bad as it could have been due to His grace. For those who want to insist that it was because of the sinfulness of New Orleans I offer the following.
Luke 13:1-5
1 There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
2 And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things?
3 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
4 Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?
5 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. (KJV)
Were the folks in New Orleans really greater sinners than anyone else in the country? No. Thus, I am firmly convinced that the immensity of this disaster is due more to the arrogance and folly of man than anything else. In war, you need to know your enemy to defeat him. The enemies of New Orleans and the other Gulf shore places are hurricanes and the resulting floods. Other places did not build adequate housing and made some miscalculations. New Orleans was placed in a lake bottom and when the poor engineering and planning failed nature filled in that lake. It may take decades to rebuild it and when it is done we may see a hurricane Category higher than they can imagine and it will happen again. It won’t be God’s wrath. It will be a repeat of man’s folly. Pray that it will be a repeat of God’s grace and miracles as well. Maranatha!!!
