Volcanoes are one of the more extreme versions of extreme weather. Nevertheless they are currently being classified as such, along with earthquakes. I know that it is massively politically incorrect to point out that God is judging people, but let’s face it he is the only one who is up to the job. And we aught not to judge lest we be judged, yet God does judge and he involves his children in his work.
It’s a scary topic, I know, but it’s kind of an important one in my opinion. These things tend to be counter intuitive in my experience, do you lack the comfort of the Holy Spirit? Pray for the fear of the Lord, and when you are trembling at his word I guarantee you’ll find comfort. Because he loves us and doesn’t want us to be afraid. But sometimes in order to find that wonderful comfort we must tremble. Thankfully he deals with us as a loving Father, and his chastisement is not for his pleasure, but to say that he is not chastising is to say that he doesn’t care. The statement that God doesn’t care makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, oh no what’s coming next? Thwack if we’re not to far out of line and a bigger thwack if we are. His patience towards us (and unbelievers too) can be enough to frustrate the angels, but when the cup of the Amorites was full, what happened? Deliverance for God’s people and judgment for his adversaries. The cups are being poured out I’m afraid, but are we able to recognize it? As with many things in God’s kingdom they are hidden in plain sight, the digging that needs to be done is in our hearts.
Revelation 6:8
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
Does it say that the pale horseman killed 1/4 of the people or does he just have power over them? There is data suggesting that through NATO pacts etc. the US is currently bound to provide protection for around 25% of the earth’s population. I think that means power, do you?
Hebrews 9:27
And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:
A lot of people have been tied up into The Book of Revelations. War, Famine, and Plague are something that has happen or something God has let loose from time to time. (Ezekiel 5:12)
Everything happens for a reason.
Casualties as they are called wouldn’t seem so casual if it was you or me.
He who loves his life shall lose it, he who hates his life in this world shall keep it for eternal life.
We all interact with weather, as do volcanoes and earthquakes— a fire produces smoke, the wind blows the smoke across the plains and when the soot particles collect moisture over cold regions, it falls as snow. That still doesn’t make fire, or volcanoes-- weather. It’s an interaction, as is your example of the tsunami caused by an earthquake. There are no “earthquakey” days, like weather-related terms-- a sunny, rainy, cloudy, or windy day.
Who controls interaction? God created the Heavens and the Earth. What stops and asteroid or comet from hitting the Earth? God does. When there is a bad Tsunami or Hurricane or Earthquake, God created those.
Are there very physical and scientific reasons for an Earthquake? Yes. Yes, there is. The spiritual often runs parallel with the physical, and there has been room for man to doubt. Someone dismissing the spiritual may have been blind and deaf to God.
Man is Holy, made in the image of God. What man does reflects. What was man reflecting?
God does not work in Mysterious ways. God works in particular ways. The Truth hurts. Knowledge brings sorrow. Ignorance is bliss?
What happens behind closed doors? Some people they were two faced. They were one way in public, and another behind closed doors. They may have been doing wickedness and scheming. (Isaiah 59) They may have been into some particular occultism. Every so often, a society may have hit a threshold of wickedness, and God sends a disaster. In the face of that disaster, they were pushed out of their routines. They were routinely wicked. Some people, they may have had a life and death experience, and they sought God with all their heart and soul and strength and mind. They found God.
It is sad that man has to have disasters and calamities towards choosing God. Men could just choose God, and choose righteousness and choose to be right. A lot of people were on a slippery slope towards God’s Judgement.
That isn’t a true statement. Blanket statements like this above, are rarely accurate. God does at times work in mysterious ways AND at other times in particular ways, and sometimes (oftentimes) in ways that are particularly mysterious.
Just as you do not know the path of the wind
*or how the bones form in the womb of a pregnant woman, * so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.
“Indeed, my ways are not like your ways,
*and my deeds are not like your deeds,” says the LORD, * “for just as the sky is higher than the earth, so my deeds are superior to your deeds and my plans superior to your plans.
We do understand the path of the wind in 2025. That is part of Physical Geography.
Do we understand how bones form in the womb in 2025? Yes. Yes, we do.
Many people, they have taken the Printing Press and the Internet for granted. We have the internet today. A man doesn’t have to take his issues to an expert, there may be someone on Youtube with expert knowledge for handyman type things. There is hundreds of years of Bible commentary every time someone logs on.
Context is important.
12 “At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. 2 Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. 3 Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. 4 But you, Daniel, roll up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end. Many will go here and there to increase knowledge.” (Daniel 12:1-4)
What makes you think you know how hard a person is trying? That’s twice now you’ve told me I’m “trying too hard.” I’ve put more far more effort into cleaning toilets than I’ve put toward you. That’s a fact.
Motivation. How is someone motivated and to what ends? Spirits effect motivations.
As a younger man, growing up, going to school, I had to be first at everything. I was super competitive. That is not exactly wrong. That type of thing needs to be tempered.
Some people, they really want attention. They would like attention. They want to look smart. They believe their opinions matter, or just want to voice opinion. Opinions are like armpits. They stink. What is The Truth? The Truth hurts. Knowledge bring sorrow. Ignorance is bliss?
What is pleasing to God?
I perceived some things about you. Those things don’t have to define you. Let us work to be right together.
Back on topic-- Have you ever read Tertullian’s Apologeticus? It loosely follows your premise that the volcano was evidence of God exacting Divine Justice in the form of hot lava.
In it he surmises that ‘acts of God’ (acts of nature) are not the result of God punishing his people (Christians) for misbehavior as some had suggested.
I bring it up for good reason. Following your logic, where “genes” are what makes bones form the way they do… then tectonic plates moving are what make volcanoes erupt they way they do, – and “God” has nothing to do with either case.
Do you see the flaw in your thinking and premise? You can’t have it both ways. You neither know how, nor why God does the things He does at will.
He was both right, and wrong. Pompeii was a particularly affluent city, a retreat of the wealthy. Are you familiar with the Starz TV series “Spartacus?” It is full of violence and nudity and perversion…so was the Rome. Pompeii may have been particularly bad. Spartacus happened about 150 years earlier, on the North side of the volcano. Pompeii was to the south.
In Pompeii, there were Christians who saw Jesus. One instance of graffiti that was found around Pompeii was an Upside-down Pentagram with the Hebrew word for “When God totally destroys something.” Like Sodom.
Tertullian was both right and wrong. Given pagans were wicked, rejecting God, being obstinate, in the face of Christianity, that may have brought about God’s judgement.
Good! Since this is the history and archeology section of the forum, these things are pertinent. Is your premise built on the idea that God destroyed Pompei by causing the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD because of what happened 150 years earlier at the time of Spartacus and the gladiator rebellion? I’m having a difficult time following your logic.
It’s a bit like you are throwing darts at the board, then attempting to connect dots. Possible, but not meaningful.
Sulla, he became Roman Dictator. There was a Roman Republic. There was something wrong with Roman Virtue, and the Republic, in a Nothing New Happens Under the Sun way. (Ecclesiastes 1:9-18) Sulla ended his dictatorship in 79BC. In 73 BC, there was Spartacus and his rebellion. There was something fundamentally wrong with what was going on in Rome.
These were things leading up to Jesus Christ who started his ministry in Judea, Rome, around the age of 30. The Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD.
What happened 150 years or so from today, in the US? We were in getting over the Civil War.
It’s a bit like you are throwing darts at the board, then attempting to connect dots. Possible, but not meaningful.
Or…I may have been in a lot of understanding. You should be too?
Jesus himself dispenses with this kind of thinking-- saying:
Your Father in heaven He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
He offers examples from what could have been considered current events, or headline news at the time…
If we can take Jesus at his word and assume he was truthful, he referenced a tower that had fallen, taking the lives of 18 people. His answer was an equivalent to the modern day-- sh** happens.
Those eighteen who were killed when the tower in Siloam fell on them, do you think they were worse offenders than all the others who live in Jerusalem? No.
Why do you think differently than Jesus?
-Or the man born blind? The assumption was that this happened as some sort of punishment that God was exacting on the parents, or perhaps on the baby that was born to them. Nonsense, says Jesus.
