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The Scripture has told us about this fallen world we are living in. In Genesis 3:17-18, God told Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field.” God would not allow sinful man to continue to live in a sinless paradise.
It is obvious, when God cursed man for his sin, He also cursed nature. Therefore the nature has its good side as well as its dark side, just like we are. Tidal waves, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and floods are just the result of that curse. And just like we are, the nature too awaits our redemption so that it can be redeemed along with us.
With the inspiration from the Holy Spirit, Apostle Paul has stated: “The creation waits in eager expectation for the son of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” (Rom 8:19-21)
God has not removed Himself from the nature. We must distinguish between the immediate cause of these events and their ultimate cause. The immediate cause of a tornado is the huge different of temperature patterns but the ultimate cause of it is God.
God rules nature directly or through secondary causes, but either way, He is in charge of everything in our nature. He is the Creator, the sustainer of all things. There are three things we must bear in mind about the relation between God and nature.
First, God who permits natural disasters to happen could choose not to permit them to happen. In the very act of allowing them, He demonstrates that they fall within the boundaries of His providence and will. In the story of Job, Satan brought about the natural calamities of lightning and wind. But he could do this only when God signed off on it; he did it because God permitted it.
Second, the Scripture sometimes picture God as being in control of nature, even without secondary causes. Scripture has clearly described us about Jesus’ power to calm down the wind with only His words. The same Christ could have spoken similar words and the tidal wave would have obeyed Him.
Third, the nature declares the glory of God, His intelligence, His beauties as well as His anger toward sins and His judgment.
So what does natural disaster tell us about God? We cannot pretend to understand all that God has in mind when tragedies come to a country, to a single family or person. But natural disasters are God’s megaphone, shouting to us messages that we should be quick to learn. Learning on what lesson?
First, death is inevitable. When you read obituaries of those who have died you should visualize your own name in it. We know someone has been died, unexpectedly, unwarned sometimes. At such moments death is so real to us that we remember that we, too, could die without warning. Natural disasters are a reminder of our mortality.
Second, natural disasters remind us that judgment is coming. Whether we like it or not, Jesus predicted that end time calamities were a sign of the end of the age. “There will be famines and earthquakes in various palaces. All these are the beginning of birth pains” (Mat 24:7-8).
Many people will not like to believe in God who judges the world. In their imagination, God is the One who only seek happiness of His creation to the best of His ability. God will never send us to hell. Unfortunately, such God that people “has made” is not the real God in the Scripture.
God does not delight in human suffering, but He does delight in the triumph of truth and justice and the completion of His hidden purposes.
