Coronavirus, floods and fires: The end of the world?

The incy wincy Coronavirus

Unusual Times?

There seems little doubt that we are living through unusual times. Across the world forest fires are increasing in frequency, recently and notably in Australia. A major reason for this is simple - as forests dry out with climate change, they become far more susceptible to combustion. And there are some interesting and unique properties of forest fires that makes them spread rapidly.

Then in the UK we have had unusual levels of water and floods, persisting over longer periods of time. (Feburary 2020 was the wettest month on record in the UK).

And now Coronavirus.

God's judgement?
Are we to read these things as God's judgement upon the world? In Scripture there are two kinds of present judgement, excluding final Judgement.

First there is the passive judgement of God. If an individual or nation or world acts in diobedience to God's will, contrary to the Maker's instructions, things will go wrong; just as a car would misfire if petrol was used instead of diesel. God has wired the world in a certain way and to go against the wiring is to bring a natural or passive judgement upon ourselves. For example, since God has designed sex to be between only one man married to one woman, sex outside of that will reap judgement. Every sexual disease is a direct result of breaking that design rule: put another way, there would be no sexual diseases in the world if sex only took place within heterosexual marriage.

Second, there is the active judgement of God. This is where God takes action decisively against an individual or nation. Sodom and Gomorrah is one example. The destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 is another.

Are the days of God's active judgement over? No, not according to Scripture. But since we no longer live in a world which posseses a theocracy (like Old Testament Israel) it is far harder for us to work out when an active judgement of God is taking place. If we lived in Old Testament days when God was on the side of Israel (and equally against her when she fell into sin), God's active judgement was easier to discern: God acted to judge the sorrounding nations. Now that we live in the New Testament age where no nation can claim theocracy, it is far harder to discern the works of judgement.

Signs of the times?
That does not mean we should write off and ignore all these global troubles. They could well be signs of God's active judgment. It just means we need to be cautious about saying "we know." Jesus gave us signs of the times in Matthew 24 so that we would be looking around the world and asking and considering what is happening.

For sure, the Church, which is the apple of God's eye is being persecuted across the globe - a fact that must bring forth the righteous anger of God. For sure spreading everywhere through social media is the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah: homosexual sin is being regarded as normal, not as a perversion. For sure millions of children are killed in the womb  before they see the light of day. For sure the common-sense division of mankind into male and female is being scorned by obvious-truth deniers. And for sure there is widespread apostacy in the churches, advocated by apostates such as Steve Chalke.

All of this is enough to bring down the wrath of God in judgement on a world that has turned its back not only on Him, but upon common sense and the light of reason. But in this New Testament Age it is impossible to assign a particular pestilence to a particular sin; impossible to speak in anything other than generalities about God's active judgement.

Unusual promises 
What we can say is that in the midst of all these troubles, God's people are given unusual promises from Psalm 46, and it is with these we end this blog.

1. God is our refuge and strength,
    an ever-present help in trouble.
² Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
    and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
³ though its waters roar and foam
    and the mountains quake with their surging.

⁴ There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
    the holy place where the Most High dwells.
⁵ God is within her, she will not fall;
    God will help her at break of day.
⁶ Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
    he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

⁷ The Lord Almighty is with us;
    the God of Jacob is our fortress.

⁸ Come and see what the Lord has done,
    the desolations he has brought on the earth.
⁹ He makes wars cease
    to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
    he burns the shields with fire.
¹⁰ He says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God;
    I will be exalted among the nations,
    I will be exalted in the earth.’

¹¹ The Lord Almighty is with us;
    the God of Jacob is our fortress.