Tsunami and Repentance

[LadyEagle]

http://www.hundredpercenter.com/PleaseSendMoneytoIndonesia.html

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

LE,

Are we going to have to go through this again?

1. How many people live in SE Asia?
2. Do you believe every single person there agrees with those sentiments?
3. If you do, can you prove that?

Joseph Botwinick

 

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by C4K:

But the world (is?) old. The tectonic plates that God created are going to shift, sometimes people will die in the weather patterns which He created and set in movement. Does God ever intervene? We can't know for sure. Does God judge directly? He very well might. But it is not my place to determine which acts are His intervention and which are the natural result of His perfect creation.

This is wrong for a number of reasons.

#1. God "interviened at the flood" -- He caused it!

#2. God is sovereign and all knowing - so even when He does not MAKE the quake - He knows about it and allows or does not allow it.

#3. In Matt 24 CHRIST HIMSELF links Earthquakes to the SOON coming ADVENT of Christ message 24:7 - RATHER than arguing that these are "confusing and nondescript events that say nothing at all about closing events".

#4. It is the MARKED INCREASE in frequency and severity that shows the time is already very late. The list you gave SHOWS an increase in frequency.

#5. By the 1970's -- 70 million people world wide had been impacted by natural disasters. By the year 2000 that number had mushroomed to 200 Million!

You may be right about God not picking out the people around the Indian ocean as the greatest sinners on earth. But you are wrong to think that this event (that has even gone so far as to change the rotation of the planet ) is nothing to take notice of -- historically.

God uses natural disasters to warn the earth of His soon return. He uses evangelists and preachers every day, and to some extent the 1000's of earthquakes that jostle the planet every year - but these "mega-events" are his loud trumpet alerting mankind to our danger, to the shortness of time, to the need to seek salvation while there is still time.

To downplay this work of God - is to fall into the 1Thess 5 pit of declaring "peace and safety" when in fact "sudden destruction" is what is around the corner.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[Gershom]

God uses natural disasters to warn the earth of His soon return. He uses evangelists and preachers every day, and to some extent the 1000's of earthquakes that jostle the planet every year - but these "mega-events" are his loud trumpet alerting mankind to our danger, to the shortness of time, to the need to seek salvation while there is still time.

Can I get an "Amen"? Amen, brother. The birth pains are increasing and getting closer together.

 

[dianetavegia]

Even so.... Come Quickly, Lord Jesus.

Agree with Bob and Gershom

 

[LadyEagle]

Me, too! Amen!

Scientists are telling us the earth is still "ringing" like a silent bell from that earthquake. It could happen anywhere, even here, if God allowed it to happen!

 

[Link]

Does God take responsibility for storms, earthquakes, and catastrophes of this nature in the Bible? Let's discuss that.

 

[NaasPreacher (C4K)]

No one has denied that God is sovereign and omnipotent.

My question comes when we claim that God did things like this because the people there were so wicked.

What do we do then when tragedies beset godly people?

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

Sort of like Job, right?

Of course, God was not punishing him. But, we can, however, see some rather clear examples of when God did punish societies for their sins, and, I believe see a clear difference in that and what happened with Job. Please read my analysis here:

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/1/2684/3.html

 

[billwald]

Most Baptists I have worshipped with think the Pope is the antichrist and all Catholics are going to Hell. One of the reasons that I got "Reformed."

 

[Joseph_Botwinick]

1. I am a Baptist.
2. I don't believe the Pope is THE Anti-Christ. I do believe he is AN anti-Christ.
3. Those who are saved are going to heaven. Those who are not are going to Hell.
4. Did you go to Reform school to get reformed?

Joseph Botwinick

 

[Link]

After the tsunami here in Indonesia (far from where I live), I saw a commercial that had an Islamic theme exhorting the people to repentence. One of the preachers at a local mosque was telling the people to repent and stop gambling, stealing, etc. Maybe this has helped open a lot of hearts. Please help me pray that there will be true repentance, and that people will be very open to the Gospel.

the hardest hit area, Aceh, instituted Islamic law and kicked out all the Christians. They had a guerilla army fighting for independance. Please help me pray that this situation will open their hearts to the Gospel.

 

[Gershom]

the hardest hit area, Aceh, instituted Islamic law and kicked out all the Christians.

Hmmm...

 

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by C4K:
No one has denied that God is sovereign and omnipotent.

My question comes when we claim that God did things like this because the people there were so wicked.

What do we do then when tragedies beset godly people?

When wicked Pilate murdered some Galileans - the disciples asked Christ about it. He responded that this brutal murder AND the incident of the tower of Siloam (Luke 13) falling on 18 Galileans killing them - were linked - were similar.

Christ said "DO you suppose that they were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate?" --

And then He said - what I claimed to be the point in my previous post -- "I tell you no - but unless you repent - you will ALL LIKEWISE perish".

It is a call to repentance.

It is a warning that we are in danger.

It may also have to do with "a region" filling up its cup of iniquity as God said about the Amorites.

Recall that when Abraham asked about when he was going to inherit the Land -- God said that it would not be for another 400 years because the cup of iniquity - the measure of guilt - the probation of the Amorites was not "yet" complete.

The idea that nations and peoples and lands (areas) are given their own probationary times and that the fall of one nation or people serves to warn another is present in scripture.

The same thing with Israel. The fall of the Northern kingdom - their cup of iniquity filled up faster than the southern kingdom -- served as a warning to the southern kingdom. But eventually in 70 AD the southern kingdom was also wiped out.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[Eric B]

I caught the clip on the earlier news, but then forgot and missed the actual interview; but Bush was on ABC tonight saying among other things, that we should not try to think God's thoughts, or something like that. I hope it can be found printed somewhere.

 

[dianetavegia]

Divine retribution, some tell their followers.

A radical Saudi cleric, Mohammad Saleh al-Munajjid, claimed the water rose to strike non-Muslim vacationers “who used to sprawl all over the beaches and in pubs overflowing with wine” during Christmas break. Yet most of the victims were from Indonesia, the most populous Muslim majority nation.

In Sri Lanka, a statue of Buddha in the southern town of Galle did not topple when the waves washed over an area near a bus terminal. A Buddhist monk, Sunama, considered it a sign.

“The people are not living according to religious virtues,” he said. “Nature has given them some punishment because they are not following the path of the Lord Buddha. The people have to learn their lesson.”

A Roman Catholic priest from St. Mary’s Church in Colombo cast the blame wider.

“This is a punishment from God because everybody is leading a wretched life,” said the Rev. Lucian Dep. “All of us are to be blamed for the tsunami. There is no sense of modesty or religiosity anymore. People have gone so far away from God. It’s a message to say, ‘Look, I’m the boss.”’

The small band of doomsayers may draw much attention. But simple acts across the region showed a remarkable sense of community in places where clashes pit faith against faith.

Buddhists and Hindus visited each others’ temples in the days after the tsunami. In India, Muslims allowed Christians and Hindus to bury 200 corpses in mausoleum grounds of a 16th-century Islamic healer in the southern town of Nagore. Riots in 2002 between Hindus and Muslims in India left more than 1,000 people dead.

“When it comes to natural disasters, we realize how helpless we are in the face of natural events and how, in fact, we are one people on this planet and we have to pull together,” said Dewi Fortuna Anwar, deputy chairman for social sciences and humanities at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

In the fishing hamlets of southern India, villagers made offerings to appease “mother” sea by offering milk and burning pungent camphor. Some believe that natural disasters happen in places where good is temporarily overwhelmed by evil.

“The mother has butchered her own children,” said M. Chelladurai, 49, from the fishing village of Nambair Nagar. “Either there is no God, or God must be cruel to do this.”


(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)