The Australian bushfires, closing in on communities with terrifying ferocity, present a truly apocalyptic scenario.
Our hearts go out to the nation, where I have close family, and we pray for rain to douse the inferno as it encircles the sprawling city of Sydney, where the traditional New Year firework display went ahead despite a petition signed by a quarter-of-a-million people – a grossly insensitive decision by any account.
A more appropriate response would be to call for national prayer – with a Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) who is a born-again Pentecostal Christian, that is surely not too much to ask. It was encouraging to see one man interviewed on television boldly declaring “thank you, Jesus!” for answers to prayer in the sparing of his own home.
I’ve just been on the phone to my brother, a retired doctor (and a believer) who tells me one of his patients had a close encounter with last month’s volcanic eruption in New Zealand that cost a number of Australian lives. He was actually on the very ship from which passengers took the fateful excursion but he desisted, explaining: “I wasn’t going to pay $400 to get blown up!”
Need for Repentance
It’s too easy to blame global warming for the latest disaster, but I am reminded of a poster outside our local parish church which announced: ‘GLOBAL WARNING: THE SON OF GOD IS COMING!’ Our Aussie friends should fix their eyes on Jesus, who alone can bring order out of chaos. There is, however, a need to repent for dispensing with commandments that have successfully built ordered societies for millennia.
I do not believe God has singled out Australia for some kind of judgment, though the capitulation of a traditionally ‘macho’ culture to the same-sex agenda is particularly shocking. But it does act as a sign for all the nations to ponder.
Messing with the basic principles of nature, as outlined in the Bible, is as foolish as it is dangerous. I am referring in particular to the wholesale undermining of marriage, a fundamental building block of society (as emphasised in God’s word), which has encircled the globe like these very bushfires in recent years. And the New South Wales parliament is in the process of decriminalising abortion, making it perfectly legal to murder the unborn.1 Now, it seems, the forces of nature are coming back to bite them, and they are apparently helpless in the face of its fury.
Messing with the basic principles of nature, as outlined in the Bible, is as foolish as it is dangerous.
Fearful Signs
Are these fires a picture of hell, of which Jesus rightly counsels us to be afraid (Matt 10:28)? They should certainly remind us that Christ is coming again as Judge and King – probably very soon. After all, he made it clear that changes in weather patterns would be among key signs of the imminence of his return, which would also be marked by wars, earthquakes and increasing bloodshed in the Middle East.
He talked of “fearful events and great signs from heaven,” adding that “people will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time, they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with great power and glory” (Luke 21:11, 25-27).
The bushfires are surely also a sign that, at the end of the age according to the word of God, the earth will be destroyed by fire. In addressing controversy over the nature of the Second Coming, the Apostle Peter warns that “the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare” (2 Pet 3:10). All of which makes way for a new heaven and a new earth.
Seeing God Clearly
In the light of such an apocalypse, we are challenged about our way of life. Who, or what, are we living for? And will our lives stand up to the intense scrutiny of a holy God?
Only if we fix our eyes on Jesus, the Creator and King of the universe, the one and only Son of God and Saviour of all who put their trust in him. My family in Australia, along with their friends and fellow countrymen, will no doubt be mystified, frightened and confused by what is happening today. As the smog over Sydney has obscured the blue sky for which it is famous, many of us cannot see life clearly because we do not see God clearly.
As the late Selwyn Hughes puts it: “A right perspective on God gives us the right perspective on everything else – life, work, money, service, relationships, and so on.”2
Jesus says: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28).
References
1 LifeSiteNews, 25 September 2019
2 Every Day with Jesus, 1 January
