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Where is God?
“Where is God?”
2005 has been quite a year! It could easily leave a person feeling insecure. Natural disasters this year include the tsunami in the Pacific Ocean, the hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, the flooding in the northeast United States and Central Asia plus we have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorists attacks in London, Indonesia, Iraq, Russia and Israel, and that's just to name a few.
Loss of life in these disasters have been both natural and man-made is being measured in multiplied thousands and the cost to repair all the damages will be in the billions- upon billions of dollars. All parts of the globe are experiencing disasters and the question being asked is, WHERE IS GOD?
Most everyone has had these questions brought to their mind. Where is God when you need Him? Why didn't God stop these things from happening?
Is it accurate to say God causes disasters as judgment? There are some who honestly hold to that view. We need to understand what the Bible teaches about judgment. Let's consider three examples: In Genesis we find God's judgment that brought the flood “And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repents Me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD” (Gen 6:7-8). His judgment resulted in the total destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah “ Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven” (Gen 19:24). Exodus 7-11 tells of God's judgment upon Egypt with the ten plagues.
These Biblical examples were judgments from God, but they are different from the events of this year. What are the differences? The three judgments in Scripture were each preceded by a warning. They were directed toward the wicked, and the righteous were protected or given a way of escape. Our present-day natural disasters were no respecter of persons. Good and bad, innocent and guilty, young and old were hit if they were in the path of the disasters.
If these were not judgments, what were they? Matthew 24: says “For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows”(Matt 24:7-8).
These events are not judgments but signs of the times. God is calling us to repentance and telling us to not become attached to the things of the world because the future is uncertain. Hope, security, and peace come from being rightly related to the SURE FOUNDATION - the Lord Jesus Christ! All signs say His return could be soon!
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