The following article, by John Reisinger, will appear in the next issue of Sound of Grace.

1.  Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2. Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3. I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them-- do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5. I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish." Luke 13:1-5 (NIV)

It is hard to imagine a more sacrilegious act than those the Galileans committed. Regardless, our Lord made it clear that we dare not assume that the tragedy of death was inflicted by God on those particular individuals because they were more wicked than other people. I think this text rules out any possibility of anyone assuming to speak for God and explain why Katrina happened. All who have a grasp of the sovereignty of God will acknowledge that God is the author of all things including the destruction of New Orleans. However, I think it is wrong to pretend that we know the mind of God in his providential actions. We know God sends the disasters but he does not tell us why he does what he does. I must remind you that God is not in any sense, at any time, or in any way obligated to explain his actions to you or me or anyone else. All we can be positively sure of is that Romans 11:36 encompass all events such as hurricane Katrina. 

For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen. (KJV)

It does not matter what happens, God’s hand must be seen in it.

Amos 3:6 When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble? When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it? 

The major difference between the prophecy of Amos and us today is in the next verse.

7 Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets. (NIV)

I am not a prophet—as some well-known television preachers claim to be—who has been given an inspired interpretation from the Lord as to why he chose to send a devastating hurricane to New Orleans. God does not speak by verbally inspired Prophets today, despite the claim of some, as he did under the Old Covenant. If ever there was a time for the Church and her representatives to exercise humility and restraint in their pronouncements it is now. 

My friend Mike McInnis wrote an excellent article on Jeremiah 12:5: “If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?” (KJV) It would seem to me that anyone who confesses any kind of belief in God would look at Katrina and say, “I am not about to contend against the God of Katrina. I am going to seek his grace and mercy.” If you think Katrina is difficult to handle, what if God really decided to let loose his wrath? Katrina would be a mere fire cracker in God’s arsenal. Sadly to say, Katrina does not seem to have humbled anyone. We are already seeing cartoonists mocking God. Yesterday I saw a cartoon that showed a picture of the devastation in New Orleans and asked, “Is this what they mean by Intelligent Design”?

We reply without hesitation, “Yes, Katrina was the careful design of a sovereign God to do exactly what he did just as the death of Christ on the Cross was the carefully planned and executed act of God. I do not have a clue as to why the Gulf Coast endured what others escaped, but I know two things for sure, (1) God designed and brought it to pass, and (2) in no sense does it mean or prove that the Gulf Coast and the people who live there are more sinful than the people who live in Ohio or Vermont.

The Book of Habakkuk teaches that national tragedies are not unrelated to God and his sovereign purposes. The events that occur in nations world wide that involve clear national consequences ultimately must involve God’s purposes for our nation as well as the Church. God not only allowed the worst of wickedness to manifest itself in Israel, he also strengthened the Chaldeans sufficiently to allow them to invade and conquer Israel. When the true prophets in Israel saw the nation being weakened and her enemies becoming stronger, they saw the handwriting on the wall. They were headed for judgment. When disasters hit without warning they pleaded with a nation to repent. 

If we view New Orleans as an isolated cesspool of iniquity being judged for its sin, we have missed the point. The Gulf Coast is only a microcosm of our nation. It a vivid example of our nation as a whole. Our Lord’s question is still the same, “Do you think those people in New Orleans were more wicked than others? If you do, you have a telephone pole stuck in your eye.” Whatever God’s purpose was in Katrina, it was not directed alone at the Gulf Coast? Katrina’s effects go far beyond the Gulf Coast.

I am convinced that God only judges sin, in the sense of judicial punishment, either in hell or on the cross. God’s judgment against sin, in a penal sense, is not meted out every day according to a carefully kept scorecard. It is a clearly observable fact that the ungodly often prosper during their whole lifetime and the godly sometimes endure hardships. Someone noted that Katrina struck two days before a yearly parade by a homosexual crowd was to take place. This, in the mind of that someone was the reason for the disaster. Someone else observed that the French Quarter, the center for homosexual activity, escaped the flood with very little damage. It all depends on how you keep score. The fact that the wicked are not necessarily punished in this life time is clearly attested to by Scripture. You need only read Psalm 73 and see that the Psalmist  wrestled with this issue.

I am no prophet or the son of a prophet. I claim no inspired interpretation as to the why and wherefore of Katrina and the devastation caused by her. However, I do claim that the Bible gives us some clear principles to help us understand how to think and act in times like this. Let me lay out a few things of which I am sure. 

All agree that a sovereign God ultimately judges national behavior as well as personal behavior. The question is, “How does he do it?” He once sent a universal flood but has promised he would not repeat that form of judgment. Destroying a city with a flood and destroying nearly all of mankind in a forty-day flood is not the same thing. 

Likewise, God sent some amazing plagues on Egypt for the express purpose of showing his wrath and his power. Romans 9 is very explicit not only that God was indeed the author of those disasters experienced by the Egyptians, but part of the reason was to manifest his power to both the Egyptians and the Israelites. Regardless of how we spin it, God was speaking and working in the Gulf Coast last week. It does not appear that very many people were listening. Nobody seems to have gotten the latter part of Christ’s message  “Don’t judge those people, you repent of your own sin.”

If you were God and you decided to judge America for her sin, exactly what would you do? In other words, how does God punish nations? Can we learn anything from God’s dealing with Israel and his dealings, as recorded in Scripture, with different nations down through history? I think we can. 

One of the first evidences of God’s judgment on a nation is a withdrawing of the preaching of the truth. Amos 8:11-12 is an amazing prophecy. It describes our national situation today in living colors. God has more and more allowed the silencing of voices that proclaim his truth and allowed a false and God dishonoring form of Gospel to sweep the land. We live in the days described by the prophet Amos.

11 "The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD, "when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. 12 Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it. (NIV)

We live in a time of almost total spiritual famine. Leaders, both religious and secular, are lauding our age as having the courage “to throw off all the vestiges of our Christian heritage and go totally secular and be politically correct.” The “here and now” is all there is so “go for it with a gusto.” We are a spiritually starved society that has plenty to live on physically but nothing to live for spiritually. For a few days last week there was a physical famine in the Gulf Coast. Its effects were a terrible and gut wrenching sight to behold. The week before there was evidence up and down Bourbon Street of another kind of famine. There were spiritually dead men and women mocking the Bread and Water of life. They kept eating and drinking the world’s garbage even as their spiritual mouths became dryer and dryer and their stomachs in vain tried to digest food that could not satisfy. The pictures last week of men and women standing in toxic water that could kill you if you drank it was the flip side of men and women in the midst of sinful and shameful behavior that could only destroy their soul. However, the situation was no different than what was taking place in nearly every city and hamlet in America. A liberated society was reveling in its freedom from the restraints of God and religion.

Life has lost all meaning and purpose because we have lost God as Creator. As Amos noted the cream of our young women and young men are asking, “What is truth? Where do I find reality?” Our universities, instead of being the source of truth, are the hot beds of outspoken rebellion to truth. When the prophet says, “Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD,” he means you may have to drive 50 or 100 miles to find a warm-hearted gospel-preaching church. On the way, you will pass hundreds of “places of worship” that have enthroned every size, shape, and color of false gods and self-exalting worship. How many God honoring churches do you have in your town? Can the prophecy of Jeremiah 6:11-16 be legitimately leveled against most, if not all, of them? Are not the youth on spring break sprees and stoned out parties asking “Who am I” and “Where is it really at” an evidence of the judgment of God on a nation that has jettisoned God and his truth?

11 Therefore I am full of the fury of the LORD; I am weary with holding in: I will pour it out upon the children abroad, and upon the assembly of young men together: for even the husband with the wife shall be taken, the aged with him that is full of days. 12 And their houses shall be turned unto others, with their fields and wives together: for I will stretch out my hand upon the inhabitants of the land, saith the LORD. 13 For from the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely. 14 They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. 15 Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the LORD. 16 Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. Jeremiah 6:11-16. (KJV)

Notice that the message of false religion does not heal the true hurt of people. We can, and it appears we will, repair the major physical problems created by Katrina. We can get food, water and clothing to those with nothing. We can build housing and supply other necessities. Given enough time and sufficient funds, we can bring a good deal of healing to the Gulf Coast. However, if the hand of God is not seen and acknowledged, then all the physical healing, as good and essential as it is will only be superficial. Actually, to successfully heal the situation physically without learning anything spiritually will make the nation to be more hardened in rebellion. It is the false prophet and his message of “peace, peace” when there really is no peace that really aggravates the problem. When God allows the false prophets to preach and does not give their hearers discernment to see through their lies, it is evidence that God is judicially blinding those people and preparing them for judgment. 

A deliberate blindness to reality was certainly one of the problems last week in the Gulf Coast. There had been warning after warning for many years that New Orleans was a sitting duck. The warnings went unheeded. There were several days of clear and urgent warnings just prior to the hurricane that, in many cases, went unheeded. The people who said “peace, peace” were in reality the worst of enemies. Is this not the same with the final judgment of God. God can, and will, judge all men and all nations. You can laugh at me, mock me, ridicule and caricature me, but it is still “appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). No one in the Gulf Coast can say, “I was not warned” nor will anyone be able to say on judgment day, “I was not warned.” Some of the most frightening and sobering words in Scripture are “God gave them up” in Romans 1:24, 26, and 28 and “so they are without excuse” in Romans 1:20. When God gives a man, or nation, over to be controlled by nothing but his own heart, that man, or nation, is reprobate and beyond hope.

This truth is not merely an “Old Testament” doctrine. Hear the great Apostle speak in II Thes. 2:10-12.

10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: 12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (KJV)

Do we really believe that? Does God literally judicially blind a sin-loving society to the place it will consciously sell the truth in order to believe and live a lie? Read Romans chapter one! Does God send strong delusions and cause men to follow corrupt leaders? Look at the text. If you will not believe God’s truth then he will fix it so you believe myths and lies. Awesome, but true.

It is not just the ungodly university professors corrupting the minds of our youth or the unbelieving preachers with their false gospel that are let loose by God on a wicked society, he also allows corrupt political leaders to become powerful exponents of godlessness. The attitude of people and their leaders toward the authority of God and his Word is one of the greatest barometers of a society’s, and an individual’s, true state before God.

It is a tragedy when religious leaders teach lies instead of truth. It is wicked when our court system protects sin instead of condemning it. It is hopeless when sin is not punished but instead is encouraged and rewarded. It is a total rejection of God and his truth when the perverse becomes the normal and the normal becomes the perverse. In such a society, the Godly become the perverted bigots and the bizarre sexual devotees become the sincere “open-minded” adult and normal people. This situation is described in Romans one. However, the final step is the conscious and deliberate exchanging the truth for a lie in order to live in open rebellion with a pacified conscience. Isaiah headlines American philosophy of life. When Isaiah 5:20-23 describes a society, and it certainly describes ours, it is ripe for God’s judgment.

20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. 21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. 22 Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks, 23 who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent. (NIV)

It is essential to see that this trading of good for evil etc. is a conscious choice of deliberate rebellion. This is not a situation where someone was hoodwinked. This is willful rejection of God and his truth.

Regardless of whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, I think most honest people believe that under Bill Clinton’s leadership the morality of sex took on a new and different public meaning. However, I must add in the same breath that I deliberately used the word public. Bill Clinton did not change America’s attitude toward morality, he merely brought to the surface what our society believed, accepted, and in many cases practiced. The great tragedy is not what Clinton did personally but the fact that most Americans said, “So what? Who cares? That is his business.” This was not only the failure of a man but the failure of a nation.

Hurricane Katrina is only one small link in a long chain. It fills in one more piece in a picture that seems to get clearer every year. It tells us another part of the unfolding story that does not have a happy ending for our nation.

If I were asked to list what I believe are the most significant events in the last fifty years. There are two things I would put on the list. One would be the Roe v.Wade abortion decision. It would not go on the list because I am so opposed to abortion, which I am, but because of the grounds upon which that decision was made. The Supreme Court ruled that the ethics and morality of our Judeo/Christian ethics had no more authority or carried no more weight in our pluralistic society than a witch doctor in the middle of Africa. With one single decision they consciously and deliberately rejected both the authority of Scripture and our history. They decreed that secular humanism was the official religion of the USA and openly rejected God and his Word. They enthroned man to be his own god. 

The second event I would list as having great significance was the turning upside down of the so-called “separation of Church and state.” Freedom of religion has been turned into freedom from religion. There is a conscious and vehement attempt to remove God from all public recognition. Romans one describes the awful down-hill slide when an individual or a nation trades the truth of God for a lie. Romans 1:28 is the last stop on the way to total reprobation  a situation from which there is no return.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; (KJV)

When Paul says, “…they did not like to retain God in their knowledge…,” he means they wanted any concept of God out of their system of knowledge as well as out of their minds. Not only did they not want to acknowledge God in any sense but they wanted to completely ignore him. They did not even want to think about God let alone worship him. Our nation has made “no God for us” the official position of government and court system. Let me illustrate how that position works itself out and how patently hypocritical the people are who espouse that view. 

A nation openly expresses in its government school curriculum what it believes is vital and important for a child to know and believe in order to be a good and useful citizen. Our government, by law and also by the decisions of the Supreme Court, has decreed that they can teach a child everything he needs to know to be the kind of person they want their citizens to be without a single reference to God! Our government and Supreme Court has officially adopted the godless philosophy of Romans 1:28. They have openly stated they will not allow God into our public system of education.

The hypocrisy of their action can easily be demonstrated. We need only look at any piece of USA money, whether it is a coin of a paper bill, and discover that the phrase “In God we trust” is printed or engraved on every one of them. The ACLU acts as if a bunch of fundamentalist Christians somehow put that phrase on our money. Actually, it was our government that printed and minted that money with that phrase on each piece. Our government wanted to make a public statement concerning America’s belief in God. They wanted the citizens to know that money was not as important as faith in God. Unfortunately, our government has radically changed its mind. It no longer wants its citizens to believe in God, our government and Supreme Court wants to take God out of our system of knowledge. Now here is the awful irony. The hypocrisy becomes blatant when our government and Supreme Court try to tell us that their present position is really what our founding fathers intended in the beginning.

Here is the dilemma. “In God we trust” is stamped and printed on our official government money. However, if a teacher in any of our government schools would display a piece of government money and say, “Today we will study what that phrase means and why our government choose to put it on every piece of our money,” that teacher would be fired! That is the kind of spiritually schizophrenic society our young people are growing up in. It is no wonder why they are saying, “What is truth? What is real and what is fantasy?” 

It is amazing, as well as amusing, to realize that the only people who are taking Katrina seriously as “An act of God” are the insurance companies. If you look at most insurance policies you will see a list of “acts of God” that are not covered in the policy. I never realized how religious insurance companies were until I first read that. Since then, I have come to the conclusion that insurance companies are probably among the most God-fearing companies in the world. They are even Calvinistic in their belief in the sovereignty of God. I wonder how long it will be before the ACLU, or someone else, will challenge in court the “religious convictions” of the insurance companies belief in a God who sovereignly acts in destroying property. Is it not amazing that the only time God is allowed in the court room is when an insurance company blames him for some tragedy! Isn’t it ridiculous that only insurance companies are so ready to invoke the idea that God was responsible for Katrina.

My purpose in this article is to show several things. First, Jesus will not allow us to consider this a judgment of God on the Gulf Coast because they were especially sinful. We all deserve judgment. Second, Katrina was one more example how of spiritually bankrupt we are as a nation. One the things that struck me was the talking heads saying, “And this is happening in America.” Is there some reason that America should be exempt from God’s judgment? I certainly do not know what it would be. Are there many reasons that America should be judged? Someone has said, “If God does not soon judge America, he will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorra.

What frightens me as I look at the horrible devastation on the Gulf Coast is the realization of how easy it is for God to reduce man’s vain hope in himself to utter despair. When I look at our position and influence around the world it scares me. When I see ungodly nations gaining strength even as ours is loosing strength, I am frightened. Israel could cry out to God to fulfill his promises.

When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the LORD thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. Deut 20:1 (KJV)

Unfortunately, we cannot say that today since God is not our god. In fact, if one of our Army generals would say, or pray, those words in public, he would be reprimanded and possibly even relieved of his duties. We cannot evoke the God or our forefathers who delivered and kept us through those first early years in the new world. We have publicly repudiated that God and rewritten history to eliminate any remembrance of him and his acts of mercy towards us.

The prophets of Israel had a basis for calling a nation to hope and faith. They were covenantally committed to God as their God. We today do not have either an ounce of valid hope or any basis for faith except our military strength. We trust in chariots and horses, we call them smart bombs and undetectable air planes. We export the slickest equipment to make war and the hottest jazz to dull the senses, but we will not and legally dare not, either trust in the name of Lord or export his message of hope and peace through faith and repentance.

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. Psalm 20:7 (KJV)

We are not being called upon to remember the name of the Lord; we are being forced to publicly deny that God ever existed in the first place.

Hurricane Katrina, in the light of our world today, causes me to have great concern for the future of our nation. In no way does that mean that America is “God’s special country and therefore under his protection.” God’s sovereign purposes may well include the soon destruction and end of America. We long ago ceased to be a country committed to the true and living God. God does not in any sense need America in order to fulfill his purposes.

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