Greetings from Helena!
On Friday morning when I first sat down on my computer it was -15 degrees below zero. Certainly cold, but in Montana we understand that is part of winter conditions. In fact, on Thursday, I saw a man strolling to his car in the grocery store parking lot wearing short pants – it was -1 degrees with a wind chill of -19! But right now we’re having extreme weather conditions around the country. So many locations are being inundated with snow (4′ in Minnesota) and even places like Portland, Oregon and even Los Angeles County in southern California has blizzard warnings. Multiple interstate highways are completely shut down. Some for snowfall, others due to freezing rain covering the roads with ice. While at the same time the southeast of our country is suffering from extreme heat!
Some will say that “mother nature” is not happy, but the more accurate answer is that God is not happy with us as a nation for forsaking Him and His ways. One of the consequences for living His way is blessings of good weather. This is brought out in Leviticus 26 where God lays out the blessing for obedience, and the curses for disobedience. (See verses below #1) God is trying to get our attention. He wants us to ask “what is going on?” But do we? Many today scoff at just the mention of God and ridicule those who believe He exists. It might be easy to ignore God now, but in the scriptures of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, God says that He will continue to send “curses” and intensify them until we finally recognize our sins and disobedience. The ultimate curse was to send the nations into captivity, which Bible students know He did to both the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
When Jesus came he also told the people of Judah that had returned to the “promised land” that they, too, needed to repent – to change from their sinful ways. (See verses below #2) But most did not, and in 70 AD the Romans destroyed Jerusalem.
Many may think that was the end.. but it wasn’t. Before his crucifixion, Jesus gave the disciples what is called the Olivet prophecy (because he gave it on the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem). In it he foretold end time events, many that we are beginning to experience now. Many of these end time events we covered in our recent online bible study on the Gospel of Mark. (See link #3 below to access both the video recordings and notes.)
As we see the intensification of natural disasters – hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, droughts, pandemics, floods, and winter storms – let’s pray that God will be merciful and open the eyes of many to come to repent and turn back to Him and His commandments. And let us also consider our ways and be sure we are all living in a manner pleasing to him. God is NOT a respecter of persons – He will judge all according to how we live our lives and whether it is in accordance with His Word. Let’s turn back to Him with our whole hearts while we have the time to do so! Let’s heed the warnings He is giving us via the extreme weather conditions across our nation!
Wishing you all a good Sabbath!
Warm regards,
Dan
