God Controls the Weather
25th September 2005
Since I have recently escaped a major hurricane hit, and something similar was brought up on a different blog entry, I wanted to post on the subject of weather and God’s involvement in it.
First off, I have to take the default position of the scripture that God is in full control of the weather. We have plenty of scripture examples of this and we all know that God is sovereign over everything. Most importantly though, we have scriptures that show His control of the weather. In addition, I have been unable to find anything in the scripture that suggests that God does not control the weather and every facet of it.
Sure we could make assumptions… i.e. The whole world is under the control of the Evil One and the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, therefore, “evil” weather comes from Satan. However, we have scripture showing that God controls the weather so why make assumptions to the contrary at all? In addition, it really is a moot point. If God is sovereign over everything then a lack of participation in an event is participation in an event (though I don’t hold to the “lack of participation” point of view).
There is only one instance in the scripture I can think of that raises a question.
Mark 4:37-41 ISV A violent windstorm came up, and the waves began breaking into the boat, so that the boat was rapidly becoming swamped. (38) But Jesus was in the back of the boat, asleep on a cushion. So they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re going to die?” (39) Then he got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Hush! Be still!” Then the wind stopped blowing, and there was a great calm. (40) He said to them, “Why are you such cowards? Don’t you have any faith yet?” (41) They were overcome with fear and kept saying to one another, “Who is this man? Even the wind and the sea obey him!”
Now let me contrast that with a few (of many) passages.
Here we see what David had to say about a storm that he experienced:
Psalms 29:1-11 NET. Acknowledge the Lord, you supernatural beings, acknowledge the Lord’s majesty and power! (2) Acknowledge the majesty of the Lord’s reputation! Worship the Lord in holy attire! (3) The Lord’s shout is heard over the water; the majestic God thunders, the Lord appears over the surging water. (4) The Lord’s shout is powerful, the Lord’s shout is majestic. (5) The Lord’s shout breaks the cedars, the Lord shatters the cedars of Lebanon. (6) He makes Lebanon skip like a calf and Sirion like a young ox. (7) The Lord’s shout strikes with flaming fire. (8) The Lord’s shout shakes the wilderness, the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. (9) The Lord’s shout bends the large trees and strips the leaves from the forests. Everyone in his temple says, “Majestic!” (10) The Lord sits enthroned over the engulfing waters, the Lord sits enthroned as the eternal king. (11) The Lord gives his people strength; the Lord grants his people security.
and more…
Job 37:6-13 NET. For to the snow he says, ‘Fall to earth,’ and to the torrential rains, ‘Pour down.’ (7) He causes everyone to stop working, so that all people may know his work. (8) The animals go to their lairs, and in their dens they remain. (9) A tempest blows out from its chamber, icy cold from the driving winds. (10) The breath of God produces ice, and the breadth of the waters freeze solid. (11) He loads the clouds with moisture; he scatters his lightning through the clouds. (12) The clouds go round in circles, wheeling about according to his plans, to carry out all that he commands them over the face of the whole inhabited world. (13) Whether it is for punishment for his land, or whether it is for mercy, he causes it to find its mark.
…
Job 38:22-38 NET. Have you entered the storehouse of the snow, or seen the armory of the hail, (23) which I reserve for the time of trouble, for the day of war and battle? (24) In what direction is lightning dispersed, or the east winds scattered over the earth? (25) Who carves out a channel for the heavy rains, and a path for the rumble of thunder, (26) to cause it to rain on an uninhabited land, a desert where there are no human beings, (27) to satisfy a devastated and desolate land, and to cause it to sprout with vegetation? (28) Does the rain have a father, or who has fathered the drops of the dew? (29) From whose womb does the ice emerge, and the frost from the sky, who gives birth to it, (30) when the waters become hard like stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen solid? (31) Can you tie the bands of the Pleiades, or release the cords of Orion? (32) Can you lead out the constellations in their seasons, or guide the Bear with its cubs? (33) Do you know the laws of the heavens, or can you set up their rule over the earth? (34) Can you raise your voice to the clouds so that a flood of water covers you? (35) Can you send out lightning bolts, and they go? Will they say to you, ‘Here we are’? (36) Who has put wisdom in the heart, or has imparted understanding to the mind? (37) Who by wisdom can count the clouds, and who can tip over the water jars of heaven, (38) when the dust hardens into a mass, and the clumps of earth stick together?
So what can I say? I have run across one verse that causes a question. However, I have a multitude of verses showing me that God controls the weather. Therefore, I can only humble myself in the sight of the Lord and give Him praise and honor for His great works. Perhaps we should stop trying to attribute events to some fictitious thing called “mother nature” and search the scripture for the truth in the matter (that is, ultimately, weather is controlled by someone, be it God, Satan, devils, or angels).
AMDG
September 27th, 2005 at 10:42
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September 27th, 2005 at 10:43
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September 28th, 2005 at 14:10
Christian Carnival #89: A Holy-istic Approach
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June 18th, 2006 at 11:11
What a great job it must be to be God. He gets all the credit when things go good, and none of the blame when things go bad. Who wouldn’t want the job? Wake up and smell the coffee. You believe in whatever god that you choose and you do so because you are scared. Fear, in whatever form that may take, is the reason for your faith. Any belief based on fear is mental cowardice. Be brave and face life and death whatever it may bring. Seek justice in this world as best you can.
June 18th, 2006 at 12:36
Phil,
You must be reading something I didn’t write. God gets all the glory all the time (from me). Blame is a poor choice of words since it can suggest “fault” and God is without fault.
Funny you should say “whatever god that you choose” since you are are making a choice NOT to believe in God…one might say that is a choice of fear and/or selfishness.
However, I can assure you that my faith is not based on fear but on love (the love of Christ).
May the Lord have mercy on you.
AMDG
June 19th, 2006 at 21:33
You assume that I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in the god that you do, but your god is the father of Jesus (or however the trinity wants to be interpreted) and that god, according to your scriptures, says that “fear of God is the beginning of knowledge”. If this is true then you must not know anything because you don’t fear God.
By the way, is not the God of the Old Testament the same God that the Muslims call Allah?
I seriously doubt that you would believe in God if you knew you would not burn in Hell if you didn’t. You can love Jesus all you want, but his love is based on fear. The fear comes first, the love second. Think about it.
I live my life in such a way that I only need one commandment, not ten. That is, to be as honest and as fair with others as I can be. If that isn’t good enough for your god, then I don’t need that god’s mercy.
Everybody chooses their god to believe in. If you are like most people, you chose the god of your parents. Had you been born in the Middle East to Muslim parents you would call him Allah.
Dare to be different. A God worthy of your love will judge you not upon what you believe about him, but upon what you do to others. The thought and the act are separate and distinct things.
July 2nd, 2006 at 20:30
Why hasn’t anyone replied to my last message of June 19th. Most of you so called Christians really are a bunch of sheep. If I were a Christian I would feel guilty as hell for letting these fundamentalist right wingers even call themselves “Christian”. I would make it my priority to rid my religion of these F***ing idiots once and for all. In any religion it is they who get most of the attention because they make the most noise. They are responsible for most of what gives religion a bad name in the eyes of the rest of us. Get rid of them or they will destroy your religion and the rest of us in the process. If I were Jesus I would be itching to return just so I could give these fools their just reward. Jesus, if you are reading this, PLEASE come back immediately and rid us of the likes of Falwell, Robertson, all those faith healer phonies, Bin Laden, etc. Maybe save Swaggart. He sings good and would be good in the choir up there. Besides, he can really be funny at times. Somebody PLEASE reply, I have much to discuss and not a lot of time to do it. You mainstream Christians need to get some guts and help Jesus out like he asked instead of worrying about your own little problems. Don’t let them preachers scare you into inaction. Most of them are just along for the ride anyway. If you can’t find the courage to even reply, at least, I beg you, direct me to a blog with some Christians with some balls.
July 2nd, 2006 at 20:46
Oh, one more thing. I don’t know how you people feel about the war in Iraq, but I can’t stand Bush and think he’s a complete idiot. Probably brain cell deficient from too much alcohol in his early years. But now that they got us into this mess these neocons you people are mostly responsible for putting into office need some advice on how to get us out. What we need to do is educate the muslim women so they learn about equality of the sexes and make them stop letting their men screw over them like they are. It would be faster just to arm some of the smarter ones to the teeth and let them do the work for us. That religion of theirs is being hijacked by the fundamentalist extremists and they need to do their own dirty work. At the very least, we shouldn’t get out of there until we get the 400 billion we from their oil revenue that we sunk into there so far and the neocons said we would. I don’t want our kids to have died in vain.
July 2nd, 2006 at 22:43
Phil,
I like to let everyone comment but there are limits. If you decide to abuse that freedom then I will just block your comments. Keep it clean and on topic.
There are plenty of sounding boards on the internet if that is what you are looking for (it isn’t this blog). Real Christians serve Christ and have goals to be Christ-like…which does not mean an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
AMDG
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:12
I am not sure what your topic is and sometimes the truth is dirty. However, you can rest assured that this will be the last time that I will use this blog. Thank you for at least answering my last communication as I was beginning to think I was the only one blogging. Please direct me to a specific blog that I can use if you know of any. I never meant to imply that “an eye for an eye” was a good moral principle to live by. But please explain something for me while we are on the subject. Many passages in the Old Testament of your Bible refer to this principle as being the correct one to follow. For example, Deuteronomy 19.21 states that “Your eye shall not pity; it shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot”. Now Jesus, in his sermon on the mount, says “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them”. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away (heaven will pass away?), not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished”. Does this mean an “eye for an eye” is not a law? I’m confused. Many Muslims seem to be following this principle in Iraq and the Middle East and seem to imply that their Koran justifies it. By the way, nobody ever answered my question about whether Jehovah and Allah are one and the same god. Please do this for me. Back to my point, can we really win a war in Iraq against an enemy that believes in an eye for an eye and we believe, as Jesus instructed, to “not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also…Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”? If we all did as Jesus wanted, wouldn’t we all be dead right now? Shouldn’t we fight evil in whatever form it takes? Isn’t this our duty as human beings? Please answer. I’m confused. Also, Jesus said in this sermon, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”. If he thinks we should be perfect then he must believe we can be perfect. If we can be perfect then what is all this bull****(is that ok?) about goals and original sin? Personally, I don’t believe in perfection. Nothing in nature is perfect because no two things are exactly alike. There is no objectivity in nature. The best we can do is to try set worthy goals AND ACHIEVE THEM when we can. Again, I will not use this blog again as you ask, but I would be very interested in your answers to all these questions if you have the guts to even accept this comment on your blog. Thanks
July 3rd, 2006 at 13:15
On topic would have to do with God controlling the weather. Blogs are different than discussion forums in that the comments should be on topic (in relation to the original blog entry). Open discussion forums usually allow you to create your own topic within a certain subject matter.
You can pose the questions on the forum if you wish. It is located at http://www.christianos.org/forum/
The answers to your questions can be quite lengthy and since the questions are off topic (in regards to this blog entry) I will be brief. Any further dicussion can take place on the forum if you wish.
To put it simply, the Old Testament law is not “applicable” as it once was. The law isn’t “done away with”, it is fulfilled. The law is but a schoolmaster that leads people to Christ (who is the fulfillment of the law). Christ and His commandments are the only “law” that apply today.
Keep in mind there are differing views on this issue in Christendom. However, the important thing to remember in Christianity is that scripture must be interpreted by scripture. If not, you have what you see today already…people just making up their own religion and picking individual verses to support their view. Christians need to work on taking the scripture as a whole and using scripture to define their views and not the other way around.
AMDG
July 3rd, 2006 at 16:58
As expected, no direct answers to my questions. Are ALL Christians wishy washy on moral questions? No wonder fundamentalists are so successful. At least they take a stand, even if it is the wrong one most of the time. I suppose most of you, like Jesus asked, would have loved Abu Musab al Zarquawi and turned the other cheek to his beheadings. At least Bush has some brain cells left. As far as God controlling the weather, who gives a shit (oops sh**)? If that’s all you have to talk about you people need to come into the real world. In my humble opinion the answer is of course he does control the weather. The weather is going to be whatever He decides it will be. What makes you people think he cares what kind of weather you may want? Do you really think you are that important? Weather is a worldwide phenomenon and all the patterns are part of a much bigger picture of global events. The ability of some people to think they are so important never fails to amaze me. Maybe I’ll check out that blog you mentioned. Maybe I will find some people with some balls there (probably fundamentalists).
November 8th, 2007 at 10:28
This to Phil and anyone else that may question the biblical meaning of the word fear.
I’ll start with this; God isn’t concerned with whether or not he is worthy of my love but rather, I should be concerned with whether or not I am worthy of his love. The beauty of believing in the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal savior is this; I am loved by Grace and believe through faith, anyone can believe in the tangible but it takes allot of commitment to believe in something you may never physically see, if seeing is believing, I think I’m just going to stop believing in air because I can’t see it. The other thing here is this business about being a good person and doing nice stuff, I’ll certainly get to heaven that way, who needs all that other stuff in that story book; the bible? That train of thought is something that a spiritually immature individual may think but that does not make you right. I am not saying that I am right because it is what I believe; I am saying that it is right because God said so and was good enough to allow it to be put to print.
My main point is this; Fear as discussed with reference to God, has nothing to do with being afraid. Children that do not fear their parents often display an innate ability to totally disrespect them and disregard the warnings they were given about making wrong decisions. Essentially fear is respect at its most rudimentary level, having fear for God shows that you hold God in extreme reverence and regard. You allow God to guide your every choice and you give him thanks for all things bad or good. Job didn’t turn from his reverence for God when God allowed Satan to destroy him mentally, physically and socially, Job still exalted God. Everything and I mean absolutely everything good and bad that happens only happens because God allows it. God has big shoulders; I think he can handle your whimpering when things go wrong, what he wants is to be revered for the good and hopes that you are smart enough to know why he allowed the bad stuff to happen to you. It seems pretty convenient to me that we are a society that take pleasure in exalting our own achievements when things are great but are always looking for someone to blame when things go bad.