Repentance and the Judgments of God
On November 1, 1755 a massive earthquake struck Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. The death toll of the quake was perhaps as high as 100,000. As Dewey Roberts records in his biography of colonial Presbyterian pastor Samuel Davies, other quakes related to the shifting of the continental plates that brought about the Lisbon quake occurred in New England a few weeks later. The Lisbon earthquake and related tremors had large emotional impact on many the world over. Dewey writes of how Samuel Davies’ own preaching was influenced by the earthquake for much of the following year. In a sermon entitled “Practical Atheism, in Denying the Agency of Divine Providence, Exposed” Davies warned that since “all our calamities, private and public [are] chastisements of [God’s] hand . . . it is high time for us to acknowledge it” (all sermon quotes are from Roberts’ biography). In another sermon Davies insisted that “it would certainly be an instance of inexcusable stupidity for us to take no notice of so dreadful a dispensation. Such devastations are at once judgments upon the places where they happen and warnings to others.” As Davies understood it, the earthquake and many other earthly disasters (such as increasing attacks by Indians on the American colonists), were signs from God meant to lead the nation to repentance. “You cannot rebel,” Davies preached in another sermon,
against the crucified Jesus with impunity, for he is not now dying on the cross, or lying senseless in the grave. He lives! He lives to avenge the affront. He lives forever, to punish you for ever. He shall prolong his days to prolong your torment. Therefore, you have no alternative, but to submit to him or perish.
To speak in such ways about earthly disasters was once much more common than it is today among Christians. For a variety of reasons, this way of speaking has fallen out of favor. Not least of these reasons is how thoroughly Christians have imbibed the naturalistic thinking of our day that sees earthly disasters as nothing but the impersonal activity of physical forces. The recent fires in the Los Angeles area have been devastating. There are likely many reasons to investigate how governmental failures have made things much worse. But we miss something very important when we neglect the older Christian way of thinking about disasters like these fires.
It is, in fact, a thoroughly biblical way of thinking. Consider, for example, the book of Revelation. While there are many difficult interpretational issues related to making sense of Revelation, some things are clear. For example, the 7 seals, 7 trumpets, and 7 plagues, are judgments from the hand of God. The best way to understand the trumpets, I would argue, is to see them as limited judgments that occur prior to the return of Christ. You can see this is comparing them with the comprehensive judgments that occur in the exact same earthly realms when the 7 plagues are poured out on the world (for a more detailed defense of this claim, see here). One of the many judgments we are to expect in the age before Christ’s return is that of fire: “The first angel blew his trumpet, and there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, and these were thrown upon the earth. And a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up” (Rev 8:7).
The fires in California ultimately come from the hand of God, and they are not random. They are “warnings,” as Davies preached, to alert the nation to its peril outside of Christ. That is the explicit purpose of the earthly judgments in Revelation, though sadly, as Rev 9:20–21 shows us
the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
Christians sometimes are too specific in their attempt to read the meaning of God’s providential desolations. They might suggest that they have a particular insight into exactly who is being judged by God and why. Such excesses have probably done much to make the older way of responding to earthly disasters fall out of favor. One could attempt to suggest that the fires are God’s judgment on California liberals, and so on (was last year’s Hurricane Helene not a judgment, then, because it devastated conservative parts of the country?).
To do so, however, would be the wrong response. This is not because of some sort of moral equivalence where we must say that every place in America is equal, morally speaking. That is clearly not the case. But when Jesus was asked about “those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them,” whether “they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem.” Jesus answered that this was not the case, but even more importantly, that “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:4–5).
The point being, that when disasters befall our nation, our primary focus should not be to engage in minute speculation about who is being judged but to take stock of one’s own spiritual state and the spiritual state of the nation as a whole. In other words, we must be careful not to miss the reason God works his fearsome judgments on the earth in the first place: they are sent by God to wake a nation up to the spiritual and temporal peril it faces. As Davies puts it, such judgments should create a sense of the urgent necessity of repentance among all:
you have . . . delayed your reformation long enough; therefore from this moment commence humble penitents, and let your country and your souls suffer no more by your willful wickedness. Whenever you recollect our past calamities, or whenever you meet with the like in time to come, immediately prostrate yourselves before the Lord; plead guilty, guilty: bewail your own sins: and bewail and mourn over the sins of the land.
Disasters, such as that currently unfolding in L.A., should lead everyone, the church included, as well as the whole nation, to reflect and mourn over their own sins, and to come to renewed repentance. In God’s kindness it may be that he would even be pleased to use such trials to bring about a revival of repentance and faith across the nation, as he has done many times in ages past.
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Your god is a monster.
Classic Karen meltdown.
And yet you think yourself great enough to oppose Him? You aren’t strong enough, and your own sense of self-righteousness will not comfort you when you are cast into the fire.
Why do you worship a god who tortures people for all eternity for failing to follow one of dozens of completely contradictory instructions? I think transubstantiation and the ‘Real Presence’ of Christ in Catholic rituals is nearly idolatry and certainly wrong, which makes me worthy of eternal punishment by their standards. I deny that icons are anything more than nice paintings, which gets me damned by the Orthodox. Do you accept everything those denominations teach? If not, what makes you think you’re correct?
The only thing talking about your god’s pleasure punishing people does is turn them away from God.
And how many tragedies that have hit the Bible Belt and the Southern states are the results of God’s punishing them? And with how many of those tragedies did we question the local and state governments?
The problem with Dunson’s article is that with a closed canon, determining why a tragedy hits any area in the world is impossible. And so it is wrong to speculate on why any tragedy is allowed to come about.
Thank you. And it’s not only natural disasters. Oxycontin killed far more people in the rural South — that’s why it was called ‘Hillbilly Heroin’ — than in California or the Northeast. Were those deaths ‘God’s judgment’ or the result of bad people making money from pain? Hurricanes hit Florida but never Washington, Oregon, or Colorado, the states that legalized cannabis first. No natural disaster has yet leveled Las Vegas. Is God okay with gambling and ‘what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas?’
Again, it’s like you don’t even read these articles. You just like to spout mindless drivel. When Ben actually said was the complete opposite, “Christians sometimes are too specific in their attempt to read the meaning of God’s providential desolations. They might suggest that they have a particular insight into exactly who is being judged by God and why… …One could attempt to suggest that the fires are God’s judgment on California liberals, and so on (was last year’s Hurricane Helene not a judgment, then, because it devastated conservative parts of the country?). To do so, however, would be the wrong response.”
Matthew 6: 19-21
Curt and Karen might be the same person. The “Curt” personality is the good cop and the “Karen” personality is the loose cannon. The mind behind these two personalities still spends the whole day reading AR articles and crafting the perfect responses that will change everyone else’s mind. At least it’s entertaining!
Why Worship This God?
“Why do you worship a god who tortures people for all eternity for failing to follow one of dozens of completely contradictory instructions?” Good question. Here is my attempt at an answer. It will not be sufficient for all.
First, I do not assent to the premise that God will judge people for failing to follow one or more completely contradictory instructions. It is much deeper than that. But I do assent to the righteous judgment of God. Let God be found true, though every man be found a liar.
Fundamentally I worship this God for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the principal part of which pertains not to the question asked above, but rather to the real question; who are we and what is our true nature?
N.T. Wright observed that all cultures, in all times and in every place, from the most primitive to the most advanced, ask the same four questions; who are we, where are we, what’s wrong and what’s the solution? Thinking persons have considered these questions to be legitimate since the dawn of time. This universal and timeless recognition that something is wrong is the reason why religion cannot be a construct of elite or powerful people to control the masses. If we did not have this sense of falling short, that something is wrong with us, then religion would have no hold. Man is first and foremost “homo religiosus” precisely because he knows something is wrong with him which demands satisfaction and justice. This actually is the reason why society does not run amuck more than it does. People believe in a final judgment meted out to each of us based on our deeds. It is absolutely essential for society to continue. Have you ever seriously considered these questions?
We can certainly see that there is something wrong with humanity on a macro level. Actually there is more than just something wrong. It is not a pathology which we can cure. It is better to characterize it as total depravity. Harsh words to be sure. But to dispute them is to ignore the obvious, even to suppress the truth. Outwardly, one only has to appeal to history, as Churchill pointed out; there is “a dark lamentable catalogue of human crime,” awaiting there for all to see to prove this point. This is truly a damming indictment. It cuts across time and culture. We can easily see the depravity of Hitler, Stalin or Mao but rest assured I can find examples in all cultures and even in the supposedly noble savage. Depravity is no respecter of persons.
It is however very easy to separate ourselves individually from this history of the human race. “The Accountant of Auschwitz” had no difficulty in separating himself from the moral atrocities of the Nazis, even as he collected and redistributed the victim’s possessions. Often, we think the aforementioned events of history can have nothing to do with me. Fair enough, we are not Nazis. But more importantly would you have been a Dietrich Bonhoeffer or the Accountant of Auschwitz when faced with the reality of standing up to them?
We are then forced to look inwardly. Who are we really? That depends on our own standard for most of us. As John Calvin said in response, when our eyes are focused downward, or when we compare ourselves to others, all looks bright and clean. But when we look up at the sun everything is truly dark in comparison. We are actually blinded.
In the Scriptures, Jesus juxtaposes what is perhaps our greatest sin with our greatest duty; “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Humanity is motivated by self-love, if not all of the time, at the very least the majority of it. This juxtaposition is meant to be an indictment. In our culture however self love is often viewed as something positive. People in general do not feel condemned by this self evident characteristic of humanity. So we must go deeper. We are incapable of diagnosing a sin within us worthy of eternal punishment. Hitler yes, the Pharisees yes, me no.
So where do we now go to ascertain the truth about who we are? Since we can easily fool ourselves, like “The Accountant of Auschwitz” did, where we go to find the answer is important. Remember after all, that the Accountant was finally convicted at age ninety-four in spite of his claim to be innocent. Therefore where we go makes all the difference. I will not make an apology for where I go. I do not believe as the evolutionist does, that this was all an accident. Eternal judgment in that case is laughable. I do not believe that one reaches the mountaintop no matter which trail he takes. That is a modern liberal universalist construct. No religion on earth agrees with it.
So I go to the Scripture, just as the Apostle did. “There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have all become useless … There is no fear of God before their eyes.” This is the answer to the question who are we?
So why do we think this God who created all things can just be spurned, ignored, even treated presumptuously without penalty? Why do we think we are autonomous? As the Westminster Confession of Faith makes clear, “He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them or upon them WHATSOEVER Himself pleases.” This includes righteous judgment, and God can not be unrighteous in anything.
But He provides an escape from the judgment due us. In the Gospel He maintains his claim to be both just and the justifier of the one who puts his trust in Him. In the Gospel all of my shortcomings are forgiven. I am saved from the wrath to come. That is why I worship this God.