God Doesn’t Send Natural Disasters

—Or Does He?  

When some prominent preacher declares an earthquake or a devastating storm to be a punishment sent by God, the news media heap ridicule on such a thought.  Since “God is love,” he doesn’t do such things—Or does he?

Even those who don’t read the Bible should be familiar with the story of the Jewish people’s exodus from Egypt—it has been the topic of epic motion pictures as well as animated features—and the plagues that God sent on Egypt before Pharaoh was finally willing to let Moses’ people go.  Some of those plagues consisted of destructive pests (frogs, gnats, flies, locusts).  Some consisted of diseases afflicting farm animals and diseases afflicting humans.  And one of the most devastating plagues was a severe hail storm:

“When Moses raised his walking stick toward the sky, the LORD sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the earth. So he caused hail to fall upon the land of Egypt.  There was hail, and lightning flashed as it hailed—the worst hailstorm in Egypt since it had become a nation. The hail destroyed all the people and animals that were in the fields in all the land of Egypt. It also destroyed everything that grew in the fields and broke all the trees in the fields.”

—Exodus 9:23-25 NCV

After they were freed from their slavery in Egypt, God told the people through Moses that they would be blessed if they obeyed his laws, but that they would be punished with disasters if they disobeyed:

“But if you do not obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands and laws I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and stay . . .  The LORD will punish you with disease, fever, swelling, heat, lack of rain, plant diseases, and mildew until you die.  . . . You will plant much seed in your field, but your harvest will be small, because locusts will eat the crop. You will plant vineyards and work hard in them, but you will not pick the grapes or drink the wine, because the worms will eat them.”

—Deuteronomy 28:15-22, 38-39 NCV

Over the centuries that followed, the Jewish people actually did rebel against God many times, and he disciplined them many times by sending troubles upon them, including wars, famines and natural disasters.  God told his prophet Jeremiah

“‘I will send war, hunger, and disease against them.’”

—Jeremiah 24:10 NCV

The drought and other disasters that ruined the Israelites’ crops were sent for the purpose of bringing them to repentance—causing them to change their hearts and minds, and turning them back to God, as he told them through his prophet Amos:

“‘I held back the rain from you three months before harvest time.   . . . People weak from thirst went from town to town for water, but they could not get enough to drink. Still you did not come back to me,’ says the LORD. ‘I made your crops die from disease and mildew. When your gardens and your vineyards got larger, locusts ate your fig and olive trees. But still you did not come back to me,’ says the LORD.  ‘I sent disasters against you, as I did to Egypt.’”

—Amos 4:7-10 NCV

The prophet Jeremiah elaborates on the sins of the people that prompted God to send disasters upon them:

“The land of Judah is full of people who are guilty of adultery. Because of this, the LORD cursed the land. It has become a very sad place, and the pastures have dried up. The people are evil and use their power in the wrong way. ‘Both the prophets and the priests live as if there were no God. I have found them doing evil things even in my own Temple,’ says the LORD. ‘So they will be in danger. They will be forced into darkness where they will be defeated. I will bring disaster on them in the year I punish them,’ says the LORD.”

—Jeremiah 23:10-12 NCV

There is a popular notion today that it was only the God of the Old Testament who sent plagues and disasters, and that in the New Testament somehow a kind and gentle Jesus took the place of the mean Old Testament God.  But that notion is popular only among people who don’t actually read the New Testament.  If they read it, they would realize that Jesus is just like his heavenly Father.  Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9 NCV)  And Hebrews 1:3 says that Jesus is “the exact representation” of God the Father. (NIV)

When he healed a sick man who had been unable to walk, Jesus also told him to stop sinning, or something worse may happen to him:

“Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, ‘See, you are well again.  Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.’”

—John 5:14 NIV

When the resurrected and risen Christ sent a message to the Christian church in the ancient city of Thyatira he gave them a stern warning of the punishment he would send on church members who behave immorally:

“I have this against you:  You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess.  By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.  I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling.  So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways.  I will strike her children dead.  Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.”

—Revelation 2:20-23 NIV

That was Jesus speaking—the same Jesus who taught love and forgiveness.  The Apostle Paul spoke of “the kindness and sternness of God” (Romans 11:22 NIV)—kindness to those who accept the forgiveness of their sins and learn from God’s mercy to leave sin behind and walk in God’s ways, but sternness to those who disregard God’s mercy and persist in wrongdoing.

So the revelation of God through Jesus Christ is consistent with the revelation of God in the Old Testament.  He is a loving heavenly Father, but also an old-fashioned strict Father who corrects and disciplines people with the aim of bringing them to repentance.  And he is a God who will ultimately punish with severity wrongdoers who reject his mercy.

The popular “Jesus” who loves and accepts everyone and everything, without a call to repentance, is not the real Jesus—the Jesus of the Bible.  People who read the Bible from cover to cover find it to be consistent from cover to cover, because God does not change.  In the book of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament in most Bibles, God tells the prophet, “I am the LORD, and I do not change.”  (Malachi 3:6 NLT)  And in the New Testament we are told, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8 NIV)

Jesus warned that there would be natural disasters in the days leading up to his return in power:

“. . . distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. . . . And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

—Luke 21:25-28

When speaking of the days leading up to his second coming, Jesus also spoke of “famines and earthquakes in various places.” (Matthew 24:7 NIV)

But, would these always be naturally occurring events, or would God actually send some of the disasters in the final days of this world?

The best answer is found in the New Testament’s last book, the Apocalypse or Revelation. It speaks plainly of God sending plagues or disasters upon this rebellious world:

“There were seven angels bringing seven disasters. These are the last disasters, because after them, God’s anger is finished.”

—Revelation 15:1 NCV

These “last disasters” God would send through his angels would include “great heat” from the sun, which could be a reference to climate change and global warming:

“The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and he was given power to burn the people with fire. They were burned by the great heat, and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these disasters. But the people refused to change their hearts and lives and give glory to God.”

—Revelation 16:8-9 NCV

The disasters during the end times would also affect sea life, reminiscent of recent reports of depleted fishing stocks and endangered species in the marine environment:

“A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died.”

—Revelation 8:8-9 NIV

These end times disasters serve as warning signs, for the purpose of alerting people to the approaching end, and to call them to repent and return to God.  But God knew ahead of time that many would refuse to listen:

“The other people who were not killed by these terrible disasters still did not change their hearts . . . and turn away from murder or evil magic, from their sexual sins or stealing.”

—Revelation 9:20-21 NCV

So, if many people today who “believe in God” don’t believe that God sends natural disasters, the reason may be that they don’t believe in the God of the Old and New Testaments, the God of the Bible—or that they are unfamiliar with what the Bible says about natural disasters in the final days of this world.