No, God is not punishing any innocent people by allowing evil or by judgments upon sinners or things which test character (note that God allowed the devil to send a great wind from the wilderness that killed Job's kids), for no one is innocent save for a relative few souls who are not morally accountable, such as infants, and whose death is a gracious deliverance from this life (and likely becoming lost) into Heaven.
But seeing as we all have broken the good laws of God and misused the good things He gave us, and often acted proud and contrary to the light we have, with most even spurning the grace of God offered in salvation by God not sparing His own Son, but delivering Him up for us all, then the question is, why should we not see manifest Divine judgments, whether by what God allows or actually sends (which He can and does)? Why does God actually restrain evil so much that the whole world is not like North Korea, which is a more manifest kind of world the devil produces?
And yet God makes the evil that He allows to work out for Good for those that love Him, and thus love what is Good. (Romans 8:32)
The problem of reconciling an Omnipotent merciful and gracious God with the evil of the world is actually a theological subject called Theodicy, and considering the alternatives - God allowing people to make choices, and an alternative to faithfulness to Him, and consequences which also affect others (by what He allows or sends), yet restraining evil and providing salvation on His own expense, and making evil work out for their good - is the only reasonable plan versus all other possible scenarios. See here .
And as a nation, we are the most blessed of all, and thus more accountable for our overall declension from God, and things like Irma are a wake up God which ought to remind people of that we are but men, not God, and are in need of Him, and whose laws we have increasingly spurned and are in need of repentance, while trials such as this make for a stronger national character. And yet i am sure more severe trials and judgments will come.
Like Israel of old,
Israel hath cast off the thing that is good: the enemy shall pursue him They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off. (Hosea 8:3,4)
I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing. (Hosea 8:12)
And lest you think is this some unpatriotic ravings of some fundamentalist Christian, i will leave you with the words of a greater man than myself:
Proclamation for National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer
President Abraham Lincoln
WHEREAS, The Senate of the United States; devoutly recognizing the Supreme authority and just government of Almighty God in all the affairs of men and nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation.
And Whereas, it is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.
And, insomuch as we know that, by His Divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People. We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.
But we have forgotten God.
We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.
All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope, authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.
Abraham Lincoln, President
William H Seward,
Secretary of State
The Senate resolution requesting the president to proclaim a day for "national prayer and humiliation" was introduced by Senator James Harlan on March 2, and adopted on March 3, 1863. , and likely becoming like the liberal and , and never has
Please control yourself and stop spamming this thread. This thread is about Irma news, that’s it.
Thank you for posting that. Powerful, timely and worthy of all of our attention.