Disaster

Disaster is a subtle calamity that brings great damage, loss or destruction to life and property. There are two categories of disasters related to human beings; personal and historical.

Personal disaster can be physical pain caused by injury, disease, handicap, genetic weakness, mental anguish caused by loss of loved ones, reputation, success, money, property, employment, or anything directed to an individual.

The adversity of famine, poverty, direct exposure to heat or cold is under personal disaster. Arrogance generates personal disaster such as disdain for divine establishment authorities. Rebellion and violation of these divinely appointed authorities sometimes end up in imprisonment.

Historical disaster is a situation that brings grief to many people. There are three categories of historical disaster; natural, man-made, and medical.

Natural disaster is a sudden and great calamity bringing tremendous damage, loss, death and destruction over a large area of a country. Natural disaster may strike as expected (as in typhoon) or sudden (as in an earthquake). The response of man to natural disaster is inconsistent and unreliable because of false always inconsistent and unreliable because of false repentance and selfish motives attached to it. Some uses these disasters for their political advantage, others for personal gains. Religious people take advantage of it for hypocritical display of piousness, while majority use it for their own personal benefits (Phil. 3:18-19).

In general, people blamed God for the damages brought by the disasters and questioned His sovereignty for not preventing it to happen. Others blindly claimed that God allowed it to happen because they are capable of handling it. Others in great pretense claimed that God is just testing their faith. Every disaster has a definite divine purpose because God is concern about the welfare and the well being of His children (Jer. 29:11).His plan of grace is perfectly designed for the imperfect man.

The task of a lifetime is to live the life inside the power system of God. God is perfect in justice and righteousness, possessing perfect integrity. He is not biased or prejudiced against imperfect man whom He provided with salvation through the Second Person of the Trinity. God accomplished the most difficult thing for Him to do that is to become a Man and die for the sins of all human beings on a cross. No single sin of any person in the entire human history was left out for accounting. He paid in full the sin of all men. God is not in business of punishing people for the sins He already settled with the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Tsumani. The term "tsunami" comes from the Japanese language meaning harbor and wave. The term was created by fishermen who returned to port to find the area surrounding the harbour devastated, although they hadn't been aware of any wave in the open water. A tsunami is not a sub-surface event in the deep ocean; it simply has much smaller amplitudes (wave heights) offshore, and very long wave lengths (sometimes over 150 kilometers long), which is why they generally pass unnoticed at sea, forming only a passing "hump" in the ocean.Tsunamis were historically referred to as tidal waves because as they approach land they take on the characteristics of a violent onrushing tide, rather than the sort of cresting waves that are formed by wind action upon the ocean (with which people are more familiar). However, as they are not actually related to tides, the term is considered misleading, and its use is discouraged by oceanographers.

A tsunami can be generated by any disturbance that displaces a large mass of water, such as an earthquake, landslide or meteor impact. However, the most common cause is an undersea earthquake. An earthquake which is too small to create a tsunami by itself may trigger an undersea landslide quite capable of generating a tsunami. Tsunamis can be generated when the sea floor abruptly deforms and vertically displaces the overlying water. Large vertical movements of the earth's crust can occur at plate boundaries. Denser oceanic plates slip under continental plates in a process known as subduction, and subduction earthquakes are particularly effective in generating tsunamis.

Man-made disasters can be political, military, or economic in nature. The cycles of the free economy, adjustment in government policy, changes in types of government may cause hardship for a large portion of society. Injustice victimizes many people where self-aggrandizement corrupts the integrity of leadership. When a nation declines, the evils of crime, terrorism, drug abuse, and prostitution inflict suffering upon the entire society.

Economic depression means famine for many. The economic health of Israel in the old Testament time depended on the nation spiritual condition. Economic prosperity was promised to nations that obeyed the law of divine establishment (Lev. 26:3-5). Today, in the Church Age, economic recovery accompanies spiritual recovery within a nation. When the economic is chronically depressed, the nation is usually in spiritual decline. Spiritual decline means disasters of every kind.

There is a spiritual decline when the remnant of the spiritually advancing mature believers in the nature shrinks while the crowd of believers that rejects Bible doctrine increases. There is spiritual decline when the remnants of the growing and advancing believers become too small to counter balance the human viewpoint of the negative volition believers. God then executes a chain of divine discipline against the nation. Whenever God allows the disaster to strike, He is thinking of their good welfare and spiritual prosperity and not of their calamity.

Medical disasters include the plague of insects, animals and plant diseases, an epidemic that slaughter a population. Medical disasters are bacterial and viral epidemic genetically engineered or naturally cultured. The viral outbreak is usually difficult to prevent, contain or control, the antidote is difficult if not impossible, and the treatment or prophylaxis is expensive.

God may use personal disaster to discipline believers who are in prolonged carnality. Divine discipline is the wake-up call, the trumpet call, the knocking at the door to wake up those in spiritual slumber. It is designed to make them realize or to think cautiously the perils that lies ahead. It is designed to make them reconsider their spiritual life with all the blessings that they have received. Personal and historical disasters are trumpet call for the carnal believers to rebound and give priority to Bible doctrine. The privilege or rebound is the only course of action for any believer living outside the will and plan of God.

God sends disaster in the lives of unbelievers as judgment of pain that serves as God’s invitation for them to accept the free gift of salvation. Since they pay no attention to normal Gospel presentation, judgment by pain is the only possible way to get their attention. The judgment by pain is a divine tool for crisis evangelism, where the unbelievers are shaken and shocked by personal disaster. Resisting and rejecting the Gospel of salvation gives the unbeliever no other option but to undergo severe disaster that leads to judgment by death. Judgment by death is the divine tool for exterminating those who resisted and rejected God’s plan of salvation for a long time.

A nation under heavy succession of disasters is a nation that defies God and His Bible doctrine. Disaster is a gauge that reveals the spiritual status of the members of the Church universal. No disaster is without a divine purpose. Every disaster or calamity is God’s message board to believers and unbelievers alike. Each individual suffers differently from each others, because God deals with each person personally. God determined the exact amount and duration of suffering, knowing the exact pressure each one of us can bear. He knows the breaking point as well as the beneficial for each person. He has already provided everything we need to survive the pressures and the accompanying conflict from the cosmic system. Christians are being disciplined here on earth because there is no discipline in eternity.

We experience various kinds of disasters here on earth because there is no disaster in heaven. We sin and we are discipline justly because desires that we reach spiritual maturity. In spiritual adulthood, the advancing believers suffer undeservedly for a while, but the benefits that it produces are permanent and eternal in value (Heb. 12:5-15). It is suffering for our faith (Bible doctrine in the souls that shapes our thinking and changes our principles and lifestyle).

“But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence; and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame’. (1 Peter 3:14-16).

J. R. Cherreguine Bible Doctrine Ministries