\u00a025 May, 2011<\/p>\n
\u00a0What was the matter with Joplin?\u00a0 Why all the nasty wind?<\/p>\n
Of course, we who are not speaking as prophets of God can only speculate about the occasion for disasters.\u00a0 When are such devastating weather-related events \u201cnatural disasters\u201d?\u00a0 And when\u00a0 \u0336\u00a0 judgments?\u00a0 Let us propose that there are no \u201cnatural disasters\u201d since God, Himself, rules and sustains His creation from beginning to end and from moment to moment.\u00a0 This is historic Christian doctrine.\u00a0\u00a0 Now, if these \u201cdisasters\u201d are judgments, for what sin(s) are they executed?\u00a0 Since He is omnipotent and omniscient, He has full knowledge of and is able to change the course of any event that occurs anywhere at anytime.<\/p>\n
Some suffer great losses and<\/i> others enjoy wonderful blessings for reasons, which though they cannot be discovered by men, still serve divine purposes (Job). We are told by the great Revelator, the Messiah himself, that sometimes diseases or handicaps occur for the awesome purpose of displaying God\u2019s glory<\/i> through a miracle at the hand His Servant \u2013 with the apparent intention of validating his Servant as the authentic messenger from God and \u201cso that the works of God might be displayed\u201d (John 9:3).<\/p>\n
The increase of His glory in that fashion is attenuated in the post-apostolic age by the absence of those miracle working, hand-picked-by-Jesus Apostles walking the earth, but the idea of someone\u2019s life bringing Him glory through affliction<\/i> is still a fact in as much as it serves to \u201csanctify\u201d God\u2019s people (Hebrews 12).\u00a0 One may turn, for a contemporary example, to the paraplegic Joni Eareckson Tada, whose diving board accident and subsequent testimony to God\u2019s grace has resulted in immeasurable praise and countless personal conversions.<\/p>\n
But let us consider the judgment of entire cities<\/i> and nations<\/i>.\u00a0 The Scriptures record the fact that judgment comes in many forms: war, famine, disease, and weather.\u00a0 Drought and flooding are the instruments of judgment associated with Elijah and Noah.\u00a0 Storms are sent by God to Jonah and to Jesus to accomplish His purposes.\u00a0 The weather serves God\u2019s purposes in bringing judgments (Deut. 28:23, 24) as well as His favor (Deut. 28:11).\u00a0\u00a0 Devastation comes to cities and nations when they corporately refusal to respond to the Truth when it is made abundantly evident to them.\u00a0 Whole cities are called to account for their rejection of the Gospel when the message has been accredited by miracles (Matt. 11:20-24).\u00a0 Cities are also called to account for violating perspicuously moral behavior.\u00a0 The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are famous for committing the eponymous sexually perverted acts known as sodomy.\u00a0 But this deed \u2013 capital crime as it is, along with rape, adultery, incest, witchcraft, blasphemy, bestiality, murder and juvenile delinquency\u00a0 \u0336\u00a0 wasa product<\/i> of their sinful life style: \u201carrogance, abundant food and careless ease\u201d;\u00a0 in which they \u201cdid not help the poor and needy\u201d (Ezek. 16:49).<\/p>\n
There was someone needy in Joplin.\u00a0 She needed simple sustenance and the whole city knew about her need.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Let us consider, again, the matter of divine judgment of a city.\u00a0 Of course, all cities have a number of unregenerate sinners and if, by tolerating or even encouraging miscreant and criminal behavior, they have earned divine chastisement if not retribution from God.\u00a0 And it is only by His own forbearance that any of our particular, blood-soaked, American cities are not smashed by any selection of the variety of meteorological catastrophes available in His heavenly arsenal (Luke 13:1-5).<\/p>\n
The salient point in these meditations upon that Word is for the observer to reflect upon the sins of a given doomed city to discover whether, perhaps, repentance is overdue for ourselves<\/i>.\u00a0 This is precisely the message Jesus gives to his listeners when he references the judgment of \u201cthe Galileans\u201d and \u201cSiloam\u201d (Luke 13).\u00a0 That these cities, when destroyed, were judged by God<\/i> is not in question.\u00a0\u00a0 The sovereignty of God is orthodox Christian doctrine.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, The matter that Jesus addressed was the false doctrine of the Jews of Jerusalem who thought that they were beyond the reach of the Law\u2019s condemnation.\u00a0 Judgments did not pertain to the covenant people. They were blameless because they had been chosen<\/i> and were in possession of God\u2019s Law.\u00a0\u00a0 Whenever they heard of the fall of other cities they did not humble themselves in gratitude that God had overlooked their sins and extended them mercy.\u00a0 Rather, they thought themselves distinguished from those sinners whose guilt was evident by the judgment they received.\u00a0 What God had intended for mercy, they interpreted as credit.\u00a0 They were not wicked like those Gentile cities.<\/p>\n The recent disaster visited upon Joplin follows soon after the earlier destruction of Japan two months ago.\u00a0\u00a0 It is useful to contemplate any particular wickedness which may have incited the Almighty\u2019s indignation, but with humble recognition of the fact that it is always by His grace that we are not treated worse some one else.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cHis mercies never come to an end.\u00a0 They are new every morning.\u201d (Lam. 3:22,23).<\/p>\n I had not been thinking about Joplin\u2019s history when I received an email from a friend.\u00a0\u00a0 Cathy Ramey was the editor and contributor to my book, A Time to Kill<\/i>, who wrote something about Joplin and Nancy Cruzan following the tornado destruction of a few days before.\u00a0\u00a0 She opined upon the subject with a phrase which serves me as the title of this short article.\u00a0 The Cruzan name is associated with accelerating the development of \u201ceuthanasia\u201d as a means of ridding society of burdensome, handicapped citizens.\u00a0 To me sure, there are more complicated issues surrounding the method that humans exit this biosphere than there are their entrance into it.\u00a0 Nevertheless, the rejection of the traditional western (Judeo-Christian) high view of human life together with the exaltation of \u201cthe environment\u201d invites some bizarre considerations regarding compulsory population control (e.g. forced abortion in China which continues without criticism from elitists of the western academy and political community).\u00a0 The western (post-Christrian) world has lost its way so that a heartland city like Joplin can be as depraved as any California San Franciscan.<\/p>\n Nancy Cruzan suffered severe brain damage from a car accident in 1983 and the moral and legal controversies in her case led to legal conflicts from which the case law has been established which governs current end-of-life issues.\u00a0 She remained until her death in 1990 in a \u201cpermanent vegetative state\u201d in which, allegedly, all higher brain activity had stopped.\u00a0 Ethics professor Scott Rae in his text book Moral Choices<\/i> describes her condition as most people like to imagine it: \u201cOnly the involuntary function, such as heartbeat, breathing, and digestion \u2013 the functions regulated by the brain stem \u2013 continued.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 She was kept alive by supplying her with foods and liquids through a tube inserted into her stomach.\u00a0\u00a0 After seven years of this, the parents wanted to stop feeding her this way.\u00a0 The controversy centered around the question of terminating not \u201cmedical treatment\u201d but \u201cbasic care.\u201d\u00a0 When the courts finally allowed the tube to be removed, she died 12 days later \u2013 having starved to death.<\/p>\n In the middle of the Cruzan controversy, Operation Rescue was at its height, organizing Christians around the country to come physically down to their local abortion facility and block the doors to prevent to intentional killing of innocent children \u2013 healthy or unhealthy.\u00a0 Ramey happened to be in Joplin, working for an OR ally and the primary news vehicle for the anti-abortion movement, Life Advocate Ministries of Portland Oregon, serving as editor of Andrew Burnett\u2019s Life Advocate Magazine<\/i> (subsequently sued out of existence by Planned Parenthood in Planned Parenthood v. ACLA, 1995<\/i>).\u00a0 She had this to say about Joplin after I asked about her now-titular quip:<\/p>\n I was in Joplin running the OR communications center at the time. My personal task at one point was to contact every church in the area and ask them to hold Nancy up in prayer at their Sunday services. Every pastor but one declined in one way or another; “we don’t want to get involved,” and excuses of that sort. It was quite discouraging to see that just requesting prayer, nothing else, and hoping the Lord would then lead them was not something they were willing to risk.<\/p>\n Yes, there are some complicated end-of-life issues distinguishable from those surrounding the intentional destruction of human beings in their earliest stages of development: fetal, pre-natal, neo-natal, even post-natal!\u00a0 But is it not damnable that the most vigorous champions of the innocent womb children in the 1980s, Operation Rescue\u00a0 \u2013 when they appealed to the churches of Joplin to simply pray<\/i> for Nancy Cruzan \u2013 should\u00a0 be rebuffed so?<\/p>\n The most essential moral and doctrinal message that must be preached<\/i> today in our pagan land is the sanctity of human life <\/i>\u2013 that human beings are created in God\u2019s image; that homo sapien<\/i>s are not just another mammal on Linnaeus\u2019s taxonomy<\/strong> chart.\u00a0 This doctrine of the imago Dei<\/i> in man is of the most profound importance and fundamental to all forms of philanthropy and humanitarianism.<\/p>\n The pastors of Joplin were called upon a few decades ago to pray at a very crucial, opportune and even divine moment.\u00a0\u00a0 They refused the call.\u00a0 The country has continued to wander through this slough of Godless folly.\u00a0 It might it be that Joplin was judged for its sin of omission on the particular occasion of the death of one helpless woman whose threatened life was made known to the whole population.<\/p>\n Yes, sympathizers will respond with that American charity which will surely be heaped upon Joplin.\u00a0 But many of these generous philanthropists, even in their kindness, have overlooked the doctrine which must be declared and upheld if the very continuation of the spirit of humanitarianism is to triumph over misanthropic environmentalism!\u00a0 That doctrine is homo imago Dei<\/i> \u2013 the image of God in man.\u00a0 This is the foundation for the dignity of man and the protection due the innocents.\u00a0 It is not difficult to imagine that environmentalism may replace<\/i> humanitarianism as a primary virtue to be desired and encouraged in the ideal citizen.\u00a0 It is crucial to the health of mankind to recognize and defend this cardinal doctrine.\u00a0 It is crucial to the re-establishment of the \u201cright to life\u201d for womb children and for those who are severely injured ex-utero persons.<\/p>\n The reports of Nancy Cruzan lying in a \u201cpersistent vegetative state\u201d are untenable.\u00a0 As Dennis Graves reported in KY3 News<\/i> (Mount Vernon, Mo., Oct. 22, 2003):<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sheriff Doug Seneker guarded Cruzan’s room at the Missouri Rehabilitation Center. Lawrence County Sheriff Doug Seneker was a deputy sheriff at the time. He questions whether Nancy Cruzan was in a persistent vegetative state. His opinion is based, in part, on her reactions three days before her death when he went into her room to check on her.\u00a0 “She turned and looked at me and stared at me with a panicky look, sweating profusely, and the thought I had was, she was thinking, \u2018Oh, here\u2019s a policeman, he\u2019ll help me.\u2019 But we weren\u2019t allowed to do that,\u201d said Seneker.<\/p>\n In fact, Seneker and other officers were required to prevent others from helping her.<\/p>\n “We had a group called Operation Rescue that were intent on getting into her and they had a nurse with them that was going to replace the feeding tube,\u201d said the sheriff. \u201cThat was their stated goal and they kept finding ways to get into the hospital. We arrested 15 of them.\u201d<\/p>\n Ramey reports to me from her own research that the realities of this case were misrepresented by national news media.\u00a0 She says:<\/p>\n Here are the facts as presented in legal affidavits by the “rehabilitation” facility staff and others who had a relationship with Nancy; she was able to eat on her own just as a 10-month baby would, with someone spooning food into her mouth. But feeding Nancy that way was deemed “too slow,” so a feeding tube was placed in her stomach to facilitate the busy staff and her too-busy family that also could not spare the time to feed her.<\/p>\n The whole tragedy was indeed a terrible ordeal for the victim\u2019s family.\u00a0 Nancy\u2019s father, Joe, killed himself in 1996, five years after Nancy died.\u00a0 Her mother, Joyce, died in 1999.<\/p>\n Maybe this city was being called by God through the mouth of OR and other Christian activists \u2013 a band of prophetic servants of God \u2013 to repent and honor the God who gives life and takes it away.\u00a0\u00a0 And if indeed that city failed to answer the call, mercy was shown for 21 years.\u00a0\u00a0 The opportunity for repentance for some is now over.\u00a0 May the living in all the rest of the United States heed the warning and repent from the shedding of innocent blood.<\/p>\n Local KY3 television showed many pictures of damges areas around St. John’s Hospital.\u00a0 One of the serires\u00a0 shows an orange and light brown (\u201ctope\u201d?) tent.\u00a0 My son, a Green Beret and captain in the U.S. Army, helped put it up.\u00a0 En route to his new duty assignment in Colorado from Ft. Bragg, he was visiting us in Ohio just before the second tornado hit, and he determined to use some of his leave time to help with the search and rescue.\u00a0\u00a0 Joplin was an hour off his route, so he drove there and arrived the night of 25 May.\u00a0 During the two days he searched, commanding other volunteers he walked through what seemed like a garbage dump.\u00a0 No living persons were found, just debris.\u00a0 Pieces of flesh \u2013 no bigger than a hand\u00a0 \u0336\u00a0 and mangled fat were recovered,\u00a0 sometimes discernable as human because of the skin or the distinct odor of rotting human remains.\u00a0 Sometimes the matter was not recognized with certainty as the remains of a mammal.\u00a0 The quick method of distinguishing flesh from inorganic debris amounted to simply sniffing it.\u00a0 Collected items were sorted out for subsequent testing.<\/p>\n In all the calamities of this world, his mercies are new very morning.\u00a0 In this truth and in the hope of His coming, the Day of the Lord will be both Light and Darkness.\u00a0 May a spirit of repentance be granted to our nation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a025 May, 2011 \u00a0What was the matter with Joplin?\u00a0 Why all the nasty wind? Of course, we who are not speaking as prophets of God can only speculate about the occasion for disasters.\u00a0 When are such devastating weather-related events \u201cnatural disasters\u201d?\u00a0 And when\u00a0 \u0336\u00a0 judgments?\u00a0 Let us propose that there are no \u201cnatural disasters\u201d since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1134"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1136,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1134\/revisions\/1136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIn heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps.
\nHe causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth,
\nWho makes lightnings for the rain,
\nWho brings forth wind from His treasuries.
\nHe smote the firstborn of Egypt,
\nBoth of man and beast.
\nHe sent signs and wonders into your midst, O Egypt,
\nUpon Pharaoh and all his servants.
\nHe smote many nations
\nAnd slew mighty kings . . . (Psalm 135:6-10).<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n