Language Studies

Difficult Sayings

God promised never to send a flood upon the Earth again
Genesis 6:17; 9:11

"I Myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die. . . I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." (Genesis 9:11)

In January 2nd’s Sunday Times a report suggested that the Boxing Day 2004 Asian tsunami which, at the time of writing, has claimed 150,000 lives and made up to 5 million people homeless, was inevitable as would be future catastrophes. Similarly, an article by Simon Jenkins in The Times suggested that society had moved away from blaming “an act of God” but could still not accept “an accident”, yet the British Chancellor Gordon Brown was still prepared to call it “a disaster of biblical proportions”.

Also in January 01, 2005 edition of The Times Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote about the Jewish attitude to suffering on this scale in an article entitled, Why does God allow terrible things to happen to His people? He said that:

“What distinguished the biblical prophets from their pagan predecessors was their refusal to see natural catastrophe as an independent force of evil, proof that at least some of the gods are hostile to mankind. . . . The religious question is, therefore, not: “Why did this happen?” But “What then shall we do?” (click for article)

I have already begun to receive emails from those either exploring or questioning their faith or questioning what did Indonesia do to deserve this. Some have suggested that persecution of Christians, idol worship or the child sex trade in Thailand may account for God’s wrath. The worst hit was Aceh in Sumatra, considered by some to be the doorway through which Islam entered SE Asia in the 8th century, but why wait 1200 years to judge it for that? Some of these ideas imply that the tsunami is God’s doing, however, these and other, perhaps greater, sins abound in other countries and they were not touched.

In the time of the biblical Flood God brought it upon a wicked world. Are we any less wicked now? Many would argue that, quite contrary to any so-called evolutionary advantage, the world is expressing its altruistic goodness through its unity in coming together to raise a record amount in public and government donations, approaching bn at the last count. Yet we are reminded of our sinful nature when in Thailand children orphaned by the tsunami are being kidnapped for the child sex trade and in Britain at least three churches had their disaster collection boxes stolen by thieves.

The UN remarked that we ended 2004 with nature at its worst and began 2005 with human nature at its best. Indeed, whilst the world still has its dictators and despots, and its armed conflicts, mainly in Middle-Eastern and Afro-Asian countries, its biggest threat comes from nature itself, something diplomats and peace activists, cannot prevent. Even scientists cannot save us from a Tsunami; they can only offer us a less than adequate, but nonetheless not to be sniffed at, tsunami/earthquake early warning system.

Samuel Terrien, a Professor of Hebrew writing in the foreword to a book^F1 on the Hebrew nature of time, writes about our future fears:

“Twentieth-century temper has to do with the fear of a catastrophic future. One mourned on account of the ephemerality of time and the other begs for ‘more time.’ Some political scientists and most ecologists are asking whether mankind will be able to learn how to behave properly before the biological margin of survival is irremediably thinned out. Eschatology has become a field of scientific research. The problem of time has displaced nature.”

The argument that natural disasters were/are signs/judgements from God may be less prevalent now than during the tsunami that his Lisbon in 1755 killing 60,000, but it is still a question being asked by some. The flood in Boscastle, Cornwall, August 2004, fortunately had no loss of life yet some associated it with its Museum of Witchcraft (click for article). Indeed, those quick to point out prophetic judgement should be careful for the Christian bookshop was also swept away by the waters whilst the museum is nearly back up and running, and was not the worst building affected by a long chalk. Britain’s worst historical flood was in 1607 in the southwest, principally affecting Cardiff and 20 surrounding parishes, drowning thousands. Contemporary evidence includes a 12 page tract entitled, God’s warning to the people of England by the great overflowing of the waters or floods, and described “mighty hilles [sic] of water . . . as of the greatest mountains in the world ...”.^F2 Do these events imply warnings from God?

Natural disasters are often seen by many as supernatural messages. God did indeed send the first flood, but also swore not to repeat it. He again used water to drown Pharaoh’s army in the sea during the Exodus (15:8-10) but that, one might argue in a court of divine law, was in self-defence of his son, the fleeing fledgling Israel.

If we are to think of nations as deserving of wrath via nature’s strength then Bangladesh and China ought to be the worst of sinners. Bangladesh lost half a million people from floods and cyclone Gorky in 1970 and 1991. China, in 1976, lost a quarter of a million people in the Tangshan earthquake and earlier in 1928 and then in 1931 China suffered the paradoxical loss of more than 3 million people first from drought and then from flooding. Communism was certainly anti-God but hardly idolatrous by any obvious reckoning. China persecuted the church in that period but it actually resulted in its growth instead. Bangladesh maybe a Muslim-Hindu mix but has no obvious crimes. See http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/disaster.html (and http://www.disastercenter.com/disaster/TOP100K.html for further disaster comparisons.)

Sodom and Gomorrah are an example when God definitely did wipe out towns possibly with a earthquake as well as with fire from on high. There is little doubt about the biblical record here and the town names have become a byword for sin and judgement. Yet there was a biblical-period earthquake recorded in Zechariah 14:5 and Amos 1:1 for which there was no attempt to tie it in with a particular judgement although God had said in Isaiah 29:6 that he does “punish” by “thunder and earthquake”, but that was addressed to Jerusalem.

Matthew 24:7 predicts that disasters including earthquakes will happen alongside the naturally occurring warring of nations, for which God cannot be blamed. These things should not worry us for they are not the end, though they can and should grieve us.

Revelation 6:12; 8:5 does however describe earthquakes in the Last Days as part of his pouring out of wrath upon the earth.

In all this the believer could do worse than pray the words of Psalm 32:6:

“For this cause everyone who is godly shall pray to You in a time when You may be found; Surely in a flood of great waters They shall not come near him.”

For those who think that God may in part be to blame for this action, not through lack of compassion and impotency but rather through judgement, then we also ought to pray as Abraham:

“Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25)

There is nothing wrong with a questioning faith, even as far as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s doubts expressed during this current disaster (click for article), that challenges our understanding and commends God to act by his own standards. If he was involved then the righteous should be preserved, and then perhaps if they are not, QED, he wasn’t involved, or we didn’t pray enough.

FOOTNOTES:
F1: DeVries, Simon J., Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975, p.7)
F2: As reported by Michael Disney in The Times, Tuesday January 4 2005, p.11

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