“I form light and
create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does
all these things” – Isa. 45:7
Lesson #2: Even if Satan
caused that tsunami in the Indian Ocean the day after Christmas, 2004, he is
not the decisive cause of over 200,000 deaths; God is.
God claims power over tsunamis in Job 38:8 and 11 when He asks Job
rhetorically, “Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb .
. . and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your
proud waves be stayed’?” God is the one
who tells the ocean how car up the coast it can travel. He is the one who keeps
the ocean from covering the land. God
says, “Up to this point,” and it stops! Psalm 89:8–9 says,
“O Lord . . . you rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still
them.”
The gospels speaks of Jesus Himself having the same control
today as He once did over the deadly threats of waves: “He . . . rebuked the
wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm” (Luke 8:24). In
other words, even if Satan caused the earthquake, he is only a secondary cause,
for God is the primary cause. Even so, God
could have stopped the waves. But He didn’t.
Don’t ever divorce God from calamity as if He is passively
sitting by and watching bad things happen without His control and intentions.
Every disaster, every calamity, God is the primary cause. Yet, He is all good
and all righteous. You may think you
know what good and righteous is, but you and I do not know the full extent. We have only been given through revelation a
portion of what righteousness and goodness is.
All we can do during such calamitous times is to say what Abraham said when
he thought about God destroying a whole city along with the righteous – “Shall
not the judge of the earth do what is right?” (Gen. 18:25).
End of Part 2
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