God Speaks in the Winds of a Hurricane

There is an old English hymn that is never sung anymore in the Disney-fied
churches of America. The words go like this:

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform,
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

The city of New Orleans is in ruins. Nearly half a million people are
without homes or the basic needs of life. Once pristine and gleaming
office towers and hotels are collapsing ruins, only gaping holes where
plate glass windows used to be. The bars that just a few days ago had
drunks staggering and vomiting their way out the the doors are closed
and will have to be torn down. The strip joints that drew men and women
of the most vile lusts and passions are empty shells. No broken,
depraved and sin-sick individuals will fulfill their lusts there today.

The Southern Decadence Days have been canceled. Over 10,000 homosexuals
were scheduled to descend on the city in a non-stop orgy of perversion
and sodomy Labor Day weekend. The party’s off. A video taken by
taxpayers at last year’s event showed homosexuals engaging in sex openly
on the streets. The police turned their backs and the city organizers
promoted this year’s event with gusto. Only it isn’t going to take place
after all. The casinos where gamblers from across the state would gather
to throw their money away in a frenzy of greed are now up to the rafters
in stinking flood waters. The slot machines are rusting beneath 10 feet
of water in some cases. The machines won’t take anyone’s money today.
The mayor of the Big Easy is calling for prayer.

We are moved, as we should be, with human compassion as we see so many
people, many of them poverty stricken to begin with, homeless and
without hope. The loss of life and the innocent people who suffer move
us to seek to help in any way we can. But in the midst of this tragedy,
let’s not fail to see the bigger lesson. Despite President Bush’s
insistence that we Americans are good people, a closer look says
otherwise.

This nation’s soil is reddened with the blood of tens of
millions of aborted children. The multi-billion dollar pornography
industry is pumping filth out of the pit of hell into the homes and
bedrooms of Americans daily. Thousands of militant homosexuals march in
the streets of American cities each year in Gay Pride parades, demanding
their rights and breathing out threatenings to those politicians who
stand in their way.

But then God speaks, as he did in Hurricane Katrina. What is He saying?
By allowing in his sovereign will this disaster, and every disaster
mankind faces, God is saying, “I, even I, am the Lord and beside me
there is no Savior.” Isaiah 43:11.

The Lord reminds us of our
desperately needy human state. He reminds us that in our arrogance and
rebellion that He alone gives and He alone takes away. He reminds us
that none of us exist without his explicit mercy towards us and He calls
us to repent and seek Him.

Evangelicals cringe now at words like these. “Don’t go making God look
like an angry, vengeful God!” they say. That’s because increasingly, the
God of Evangelicalism only has one quality, love. The many passages of
Scripture that speak of God’s holiness, his righteousness and his
intolerance for sin are ignored. The passages that speak of God’s
dealing with a rebellious Children of Israel are relegated to quaint
stories for our children in Sunday School. But the God who judges in
history, who raises up leaders and who brings them down, a God who will
not tolerate forever the sins of a nation that sheds innocent blood?
“No, that’s not God,” they say. “And don’t let a newspaper reporter hear
you say that, or we’re toast!”

Even a cursory reading of Scripture reveals a God who is not only loving
but is wrathful against all evil, as well. The rebellion of America has
been a stench in the nostrils of God for a long time. Why God has stayed
his hand on this land for so long, I do not know. I am grateful for that
mercy but I tremble for America’s future if there is no repentance in
Christ’s church. Why the church? Because Scripture tell us that judgment
begins in God’s house. I have written repeatedly about Evangelicalism
that in a quest for temporal greatness and influence has perverted the
Gospel until it is unrecognizable. This, God will judge.

As the howling winds of Katrina destroyed expensive homes and tossed
costly cars like matchboxes, they pointed us to the words of Jesus
Christ:

“Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I
will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock. And
the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat
upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.“
Matthew 7:25-26

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© 2005

Ingrid Schlueter

Ingrid Schlueter has been producer and co-host of the Crosstalk
Radio Talk Show on the VCY America Radio Network for 18 years. She
is author of numerous articles on current issues and is a regular
columnist for Wisconsin Christian News. She has also authored, Parent Police: The UN Wants Your Children. Email:

vcyproducer@aol.com  Website:


http://sliceoflaodicea.com  

 

Other articles by Ingrid Schlueter:

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
Policy is Destroying the Church
(More will be added)

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