How Has Hurricane Sandy Affected You Spiritually?

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How Has Hurricane Sandy Affected You Spiritually?

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This storm was unlike any other. Several very powerful weather systems combined, slamming into one of the most populated parts of America: New York City and New Jersey.

In one example of the human tragedy of the storm, the Wall Street Journal reported on a community of elderly people on Staten Island that didn’t evacuate before the storm. Many lived, but some drowned alone in their homes. In all, almost 200 people died in the storm’s path. Besides the human loss, about $50 billion in property damage is estimated.

It seems like natural disasters are getting worse and more frequent

Jesus told His disciples that in the end time, “There will be famines, pestilences [disease epidemics] and earthquakes in various places” (Matthew 24:7).

Scientists reported in 2005 that while the number of hurricanes and cyclones had not increased, “the researchers did find a sharp increase during the past 35 years in the number of category 4 and 5 tropical cyclones, the most intense storms that cause most of the damage on landfall” (Richard Kerr, “Is Katrina a Harbinger of Still More Powerful Hurricanes?” p. 1807, Sept. 16, 2005).

Remember the awful earthquake and tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004? That disaster killed 300,000 people, more than any from any earthquake in more than 500 years.

America is experiencing more and more of these intense disasters. A German insurance reinsurance company reported that between 1980 and 2011, the number of big weather-related losses increased five times!

Nature out of control

Jesus predicted some truly scary conditions that will happen right before He returns. He even said, “In fact, unless that time of calamity is shortened, the entire human race will be destroyed. But it will be shortened for the sake of God’s chosen ones.” (Matthew 24:21-22, NLT).

Isaiah put it this way: “Look! The Lord is coming from heaven to punish the people of the earth for their sins”” (Isaiah 26:21, New Living Translation).

Now what will you do?

Everybody’s heart goes out for the people suffering after Hurricane Sandy. It was the same after Katrina in 2005. In fact, rapes in one large West Coast city stopped for about a week after that hurricane. But it didn’t last. It’s like Hosea the prophet said:  “Your love vanishes like the morning mist and disappears like dew in the sunlight” (Hosea 6:4).

But it’s all too easy to go back to our materialistic lifestyles. Football, basketball, movies, TV shows and video games are still there to draw our attention, as if nothing had happened.

That’s not what God wants. Just like Noah’s Flood, which killed everybody on earth except Noah and his family, people were going about their daily lives as if nothing bad was ever going to happen (Luke 17:26-30).

It’s the same today.

Nobody believed Noah in his day. And in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot sighed and cried over the sins of Sodom, but not even 10 righteous people could be found there (Genesis 18:32).

Don’t just study the prophecies of God, take action!

No matter what the nation does, you personally can swim upstream and change your own lifestyle to one devoted to God’s righteousness (Psalm 119:172).