The weather has always been an issue. Society originally being completely agrarian, weather could mean survival or ruin, in short season. Crops and animals (hey, our food prices), travel and warfare – have always all been dependent upon weather. Ask Napoleon or Hannibal or Hitler (3 ego-maniacs with huge armies), crossing the mountains of Europe in snowy winters does not work.
In the Garden, the weather was perfect. After the fall of man, and during the cataclysmic events of the Flood (memorialized in most every ancient culture), lots of things got shifted and changed. The earth cracked open and waters came UP out of the earth – as well as rain falling from the sky for the first time.
Gen 6:13
13 And God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
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Gen 6:17
17 “And behold, I Myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die.
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Gen 7:10-12
10 And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth.
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
12 And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.
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And we’ve had weather ever since – low pressure fronts trying to compensate for high pressure fronts, all that kind of stuff. A world off-axis, shaken the first time by God in judgment, still reeling from that event. Of course we know there’s a promise of a greater shaking event, but that is towards the end of time.
Hag 2:6-7
6 “For thus says the LORD of hosts: “Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land;
7 ‘and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the LORD of hosts.
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So God, identified by His warrior title – Adonai T’sva-oat (King of the Universe and Commander of the Armies of heaven – sounds more robust than Lord Almighty or Lord of Hosts), tells us that those kind of geographical as well as physical shakings are under His control.
Back To Weather.
Amos 4:5-13
5 Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, proclaim and announce the freewill offerings; for this you love, you children of Israel!” Says the Lord GOD.
6 “Also I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities. And lack of bread in all your places; yet you have not returned to Me,” says the LORD.
7 “I also withheld rain from you, when there were still three months to the harvest. I made it rain on one city, I withheld rain from another city. One part was rained upon, and where it did not rain the part withered.
8 So two or three cities wandered to another city to drink water, but they were not satisfied; yet you have not returned to Me,” says the LORD.
9 “I blasted you with blight and mildew. When your gardens increased, your vineyards, your fig trees, and your olive trees, the locust devoured them; yet you have not returned to Me,” says the LORD.
10 “I sent among you a plague after the manner of Egypt; your young men I killed with a sword, along with your captive horses; I made the stench of your camps come up into your nostrils; yet you have not returned to Me,” says the LORD.
11 “I overthrew some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a firebrand plucked from the burning; yet you have not returned to Me,” says the LORD.
12 “Therefore thus will I do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!”
13 For behold, he who forms mountains, and creates the wind, who declares to man what his thought is, and makes the morning darkness, who treads the high places of the earth– the LORD God of hosts is His name.
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In Amos, God reveals His sovereign control and utilization of weather, and its resultant effect. He is in charge. Always has been. Always will be. And meanwhile mankind wants to come up with bumper-stickers philosophies like “S— Happens”.
My bible tells me that a little sparrow does not fall to the ground without the Father knowing it, so I can write off any happenings as just happening. And He owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Ps 50) And the hills.
So God uses weather to deal with man. He uses other things as well, anything He so chooses, and may deem necessary – because the priority is man returning to God, not things going smoothly (Matt 18:8).
God will even call forth one nation against another.
Isa 45:5-9
5 I am the LORD, and there is no other; there is no God besides Me. I will gird you, though you have not known Me,
6 That they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting that there is none besides Me. I am the LORD, and there is no other;
7 I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the LORD, do all these things.’
8 “Rain down, you heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness; let the earth open, let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together. I, the LORD, have created it.
9 “Woe to him who strives with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth! Shall the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ Or shall your handiwork say, ‘He has no hands’?
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And how has our weather been lately? Droughts, famines, weird stuff. Extreme heat. Fish dying for lack of oxygen, in heated waters. And these reports are increasing in both frequency and intensity. We don’t even bring up the earthquake in Japan any more. Google and see how it’s going for those poor folks. They are still living it.
This is not about global WARMING. This is about Global WARNING.
God, not willing that any perish but that all will come to repentance, is dealing with mankind. Will we respond? Will the believers please respond first, and get some 2 Chron 7:14 activity onto their Priority List?
2 Chr 7:14
14 “if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
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Getting that into our lifestyles is more than one sober message delivered in clarity and humility, responded to by one on-our-faces altar call (or pray while remaing comfortably in your chairs, beloved brethren, if it is asking too much of you to get up and actually present your body before God).
God is doing something, and when He acts, we are responsible to respond.
Paul, in Colossians 1:28, said he warned (admonished) every man. Saved and unsaved.
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