Posted on 09/09/2017 8:32:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
As I write these words from the safety of my home, with the weather outside beautiful and calm, people in other parts of America (and the Caribbean) are suffering terrible upheaval. Lives have been lost. Families have been torn apart. Houses have been destroyed. Whole islands have been devastated.
So, I do not write this lightly. In fact, I think of the famous dictum of Rabbi Irving Greenberg when talking about the Holocaust. “No statement,” he said, “theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children.” (He was referring, of course, to Jewish children who were thrown into the fire by the Nazis.)
In that same spirit (and without intending in any way to compare the Holocaust to today’s natural disasters), we should make no statement, theological or otherwise, about Hurricane Harvey and Irma (along with the fires in the west) that could not be made in the presence of families who have lost loved ones (or, lost everything else).
As for the cause of these storms, I will leave that to others to decide. Are these satanic attacks? Divine judgments? Completely natural occurrences? The results of global warming? Something else? Again, that is for others to say.
What I have sensed as I have prayed for the victims and prayed for the nation is a very simple message, one that I heard whispered rather than shouted. And it was not an angry, thundering message but rather one of loving appeal from the heavenly Father.
Do I believe that one day God will judge the whole world? Certainly.
Do I believe that His wrath will be poured on a rebellious creation? Without a doubt.
Do I believe that His voice will thunder with such intensity that the very earth will shake? Yes, I honestly do.
And yet it is not the voice of thunder or anger or wrath that I hear right now.
Instead, it is the still small voice that is heard in the midst of the fire, wind, and storm (see 1 Kings 19).
It is the voice that is heard as a toddler clings to her dead mother in the flood-ravaged streets of Houston.
It is the voice that is heard as a family desperately searches for a missing loved one in another city nearby.
It is the voice that is heard as a couple rides a boat through a flattened neighborhood in Barbuda.
It is the voice that is heard as a million people pack their cars in Florida and flee for their lives.
It is the voice that is heard as the proud human race cowers in terror in the face of a storm of monstrous proportions, as the work of our hands – the work of decades and even centuries – is leveled by wind and rain.
It is the voice of the Creator speaking to His creation.
It is the voice of the Father speaking to His children.
It is the voice of the Lord that says, “America, you need Me!”
It is the voice of appeal, the voice of mercy, the voice of the Healer ready to mend and restore.
You might say, “But how can that be? Surely God is not passive in the world. Surely He had the power to stop the storms. Some would even say He sends the storms.”
Again, it is for others to decide what is happening behind the scenes and how God governs His world (and again, let it be done with caution; see Deuteronomy 29:29).
Yet even for those who believe that the Lord is sending these disasters as a judgment on America, we must do as Job did many centuries ago. He was convinced that God was responsible for his terrible suffering, yet he knew that his only hope was in God. So what did he do? In the words of a Jewish philosopher, he fled from God to God. That was his only choice.
But, to repeat. I am not saying that these hurricanes and fires have been sent by God as judgment. That is for Him to know and make known.
What I’m saying is that these storms remind us of our frailty, of our weakness, of our helplessness, of our need. What I’m saying is that they remind us that we are the creation, not the Creator, and our help is found in Him alone.
We can send satellites to Mars and build enough nuclear weapons to blow up the earth. And we can design robots and discover the meaning of DNA. Yet we cannot stop the wind and the rain and the fire. We cower before Mother Nature, recognizing our fate is not in our hands.
Right now, towns and cities in our nation are completely overwhelmed, and the rebuilding process will take many years. But that is also a picture of our spiritual state. We are torn apart, divided, and devastated, and the time for rebuilding must begin now. Yet we can only rebuild with the help of our Maker.
It is His voice that I hear again, saying, “America, you need Me!”
If we seek Him, He will be found.
When I began to write Saving a Sick America last year, I was overwhelmed with just how sick we were. But the more I wrote, the more I felt hope rising out of the despair. America can be saved.
The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.
After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.
After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.
And after the fire came a gentle whisper.
If this does not happen, the US will be thrown onto the pile of other dead empires, like Egypt, Assyria, Carthage and Rome. God is not mocked.
The political drama and machinations are all tinsel in the light of Psalm 2.
Yet would it surprise you that President Trump had been elected simply because God may be merciful by giving the USA more time to turn back to Him?
I sense that God is giving us more time by the election last year of Donald J. Trump.
We’ll stated, and reminds me of these scriptures...
Eza 9:8 — Eza 9:15 (KJV)
8 And now for a LITTLE SPACE grace hath been shewed from the Lord our God, to leave us a remnant to escape, and to give us a nail in his holy place, that our God may lighten our eyes, and give us a little reviving in our bondage.
9 For we were bondmen; yet our God hath not forsaken us in our bondage, but hath extended mercy unto us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us a reviving, to set up the house of our God, and to repair the desolations thereof, and to give us a wall in Judah and in Jerusalem.
10 And now, O our God, what shall we say after this? for we have forsaken thy commandments, 11 Which thou hast commanded by thy servants the prophets, saying, The land, unto which ye go to possess it, is an unclean land with the filthiness of the people of the lands, with their abominations, which have filled it from one end to another with their uncleanness.
12 Now therefore give not your daughters unto their sons, neither take their daughters unto your sons, nor seek their peace or their wealth for ever: that ye may be strong, and eat the good of the land, and leave it for an inheritance to your children for ever.
13 And after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds, and for our great trespass, seeing that thou our God hast PUNISHED US LESS than our iniquities deserve, and hast given us such deliverance as this;
14 Should we again break thy commandments, and join in affinity with the people of these abominations? wouldest not thou be angry with us till thou hadst consumed us, so that there should be no remnant nor escaping?
15 O Lord God of Israel, thou art righteous: for we remain yet escaped, as it is this day: behold, we are before thee in our trespasses: for we cannot stand before thee because of this.
Trials like Harvey and Irma (even if Irma miraculously veered out into the ocean, fear of her has driven millions out of Florida now) are opportunities for God to call people back to Him. And maybe Donald Trump was put there to be a willing voice for this; not being politically correct he isn’t nearly as shy about God as some seemingly more religious politicians.
As tragic as losing lives is, it means even more to God than it does to people. God doesn’t let it happen wantonly. He isn’t playing some detached game of dice in heaven. He sees the other side of the story and not a single death or loss is without a connected meaning. It COULD be as simple as direct, personal moral guilt but it often isn’t. Christianity speaks of martyrs too, people who died early with no special blame upon them to account for it. But if they were willing believers, they would be ushered richly into heaven afterwards, a reward far, far more valuable than the toll exacted by being forced to leave the earth early.
Collective disasters are often chastisements of collective folly. But before God, a chastisement is the flip side of an opportunity to walk anew through the welcoming doors of a God who will not despise a broken and contrite heart. The Lord may let Satan and evil people be goons. He won’t be one Himself.
amen
Yep, pretty much. We leave our mobile home tonight for a safer place, wondering what we'll find when we get back. It's an absolute awful feeling.
America started out with a startling witness to the Lord — startling by worldly standards. It was a land of pilgrimage, of pioneering, things that needed a great measure of faith to undertake.
I do not believe the Lord desires to lightly let that heritage be wasted before the world. America has had flaws and sins — grievous ones. And yet even in the middle of the flaws and sins, echoes of the Lord’s voice resound.
I believe we can validly pray for the Lord to hear us from the foundation of the world and seed this place and time with the elect — the souls who will believe and thereby attract the Lord’s blessing. Maybe this happened in John Knox era Scotland, where those stern old Calvinists approached the Lord with all the boldness that their theology deemed possible, and asked for something of this sort. And God answered: at one point it was said that “Christians were coming down from the skies” the revivals were so great.
But if this takes place, let us remember after it begins that the glory belongs to the Lord. He is the One who extended to us the possibility of the granted prayer. We didn’t twist His arm for a blessing that was beyond His will. We wouldn’t even have been able to think about such things without His guidance of our minds and hearts.
The usual peace of nature is a gift to us from God. Its disruption reminds us that it is not an everlasting gift; it is subject to limitations and change.
Let’s pray to the Lord that even if what is perishable perishes, that we shall be infused with an even better awareness of what is imperishable.
During this time we must mend our ways or God will be mocked.
First course of action: Stop all abortions!
No, it would not surprise me. I saw the Cyrus analogy before it became a meme. But he has to hold up, and so do we. More weight is on us than on him, really.
While I don’t disagree with any of the substance of what you say - I do not see humility, reflection, repentance, prayer or even much awareness on a broad scale. There will always be the few, the remnant. But a remorse and reversal like Ninevah? - Well, watch and pray, of course, but I’m not seeing much sign. Perhaps some of Generation Z’s rejection of our degenerate and vicious dominant culture.
Can these dry bones live? Yes. But will they?
Oh that’s quite so. America seems to be spiritually numb.
Ultimately the Lord must schedule it to happen if there is to be a reversal, as Nineveh saw. There is no fault in the prayer for God to do just that. I think Christian faith, even among seemingly fervent believers, often falters in the fatalistic direction. But that isn’t necessary. The scriptures will all apply of course. But nobody, not even God, is saying that they must apply according to our own worst fears. He listens to prayer from the foundation of the world. Answers are already arranged for them, in a paradox that human minds cannot completely embrace. We on earth are married to time in a way that God isn’t.
There is no fault in the prayer for “Lord, let these dry bones live.” Not until the Lord squarely tells us it won’t happen. Not just because we may fear it won’t happen.
Where are all the Muslim charities pitching in to help in Texas and Florida? Don’t see the Red Crescent Society (Muslim Red Cross) mosques sending volunteers to help either.
I don’t think there is such a thing as a Muslim charities. Yesterday though on Fox News I saw a Arab nail a board on a window somewhere in Florida
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