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DIVINE WEATHER How God Has Used Weather to Direct History “Praise the LORD from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps: Fire, and hail; snow, and vapour; stormy wind fulfilling his word.” (Psa. 148:7-8) There are hundreds of references in the Bible to such weather conditions as wind, rain, clouds, snow, hail, thunder, lightening, etc. But the word of God not only makes mention of such things; it declares very emphatically that God is the author of it all. Not only did God create all the forces necessary to drive and sustain all weather conditions, He uses the various weather conditions for the purpose of fulfilling His will in the earth. Our God is not some distant deity that never concerns himself with the affairs of this world. He is the judge of all the earth (Gen. 18:25), and He is constantly taking action in the affairs of men, with or without an invitation. This was true in Bible times, but it is also true today, and I hope to give you plenty samples of both in this message. First, let’s consider Genesis 7:4: “For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.” God used weather to accomplish His will in the earth. God’s book begins with Him using weather, and there is nothing recorded in it later that indicates He has stopped. To the contrary, clear through the book of Revelation, we find God using the forces of nature to accomplish His will. His original plan was that a mist came up from the earth and watered the ground (Gen. 2:6), but then men grew so wicked that God decided to destroy the human race. How did He do it? He did it with weather. He caused it to rain forty days and forty nights, and all the fountains of the great deep were broken up (Gen. 7:11). That was the first of many times that God used rain to direct world events. On a more recent note, every Christian should be familiar with how God defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in the year 1815. Like most European dictators, Napoleon was obsessed with power, and he just had to rule Europe. His army headquarters said he would fight the battle of Waterloo (several miles south of Brussels) at 6:00 a.m. and be victorious by 2:00 p.m. This probably would have been the case since the opposing armies of Wellington and Blucher could not join forces until around 5:00 p.m. Napoleon had a strength of about 105,000 men, Wellington (actually the Duke of Wellington) had 68,000, and Blucher had about 45,000. Napoleon needed to whip Wellington before Blucher could arrive, and he had plans to do so, but God had other plans. Throughout the night, God opened the windows of heaven and gave the whole area a lovely, ground-softening rain that prevented Napoleon from moving his artillery. He had to postpone his attack plans until later in the day, thus giving Blucher enough time to join forces with Wellington. Napoleon met his final defeat, losing 25,000 men and having 9,000 captured. The British Empire remained intact. An even more recent incident concerning rain happened on D-Day, 1944, during the invasion at Normandy. The weather had been stormy, and the Germans had received intelligence stating that Eisenhower would not launch an attack. In spite of the stormy weather, General Eisenhower went ahead with the invasion, hoping for a break in the weather, thus giving him the advantage of surprise. He got just what he wanted. The weather broke just in time for the attack to go as planned. Eight years later, Eisenhower recalled how the hand of God had moved in his favor: “I made the most agonizing decision of my life . . . the consequences of that decision . . . could not have been forseen by anyone. If there were nothing else in my life to prove the existence of an almighty and merciful God, the events of the next twenty-four hours did it . . . with losses far below those we had anticipated.” Okay, back to the Bible. In Exodus 9:23-29, God sent thunder, hail and fire on the Egyptians as He sought to deliver the Israelites from bondage. And why not, didn’t Psalm 148:8 say, “. . . Fire, and hail . . . fulfilling his word”? Let’s get Leviticus 26:18-20: “And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass: And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.” God promised to withhold rain from the land of those who rebel against Him. We find this same basic truth echoed in Deuteronomy 11:13-15. Alright, let’s take a look at Joshua 10:11 and see what God is doing to the Amorites: “And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Bethhoron, that the LORD cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword.” The Lord is a “man of war,” Exodus 15:3 says, so we should expect Him to fire his weapons once in a while. Amen? God also uses thunder to fight against His enemies. I Samuel 7:10 says, “And as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel: but the LORD thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discomfited them; and they were smitten before Israel.” In addition to the possibility of being struck by lightening any second, the psychological effect of the noise was a major factor. Acoustics are sometimes used as a weapon even to this day. Waco, Texas, and Janet Reno come to mind. In I Samuel 12:18, we read these words: “So Samuel called unto the LORD; and the LORD sent thunder and rain that day: and all the people greatly feared the LORD and Samuel.” Here God used the weather to do a work among His own people. Notice God’s promise to Solomon in I Kings 8:35-36: “When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against thee; if they pray toward this place, and confess thy name, and turn from their sin, when thou afflictest them: Then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy servants, and of thy people Israel, that thou teach them the good way wherein they should walk, and give rain upon thy land, which thou hast given to thy people for an inheritance.” Well, I can’t move on without another story about rain, this one concerning General George Patton. On December 8, 1944, in Nancy, France, General Patton needed some dry weather. So he phoned the Third Army Chaplain and requested a prayer for good weather. The chaplain didn’t have one, so he wrote one on a small Christmas greeting card. Patton liked the prayer so much that he ordered 250,000 copies printed and distributed. The prayer reads as follows: “Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations.” The cards reached the troops around December 12-14, which inspired much prayer in the week to follow. Then during the week of December 20, God sent the answer. The skies cleared and provided perfect flying weather. We knocked out hundreds of enemy tanks, thousands of enemy troops, and sent the Germans home. God withheld rain from Israel in the days of Ahab and Jezebel: “And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.” (I Kgs. 17:1). “And it came to pass after many days, that the word of the LORD came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go, shew thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth.” (I Kgs. 18:1) We read in James 5:17 that “it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.” No doubt, there were people going around thinking that God had nothing to do with any of this. This would be the crowd that worshipped Baal in I Kings 18. Now get Job 38:22-23: “Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail, Which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war?” Some snow and hail is especially reserved by God for later purposes. In 1812, Napoleon decided that he needed to invade Russia. Had he read his Bible, he might have re-thought his plans, since Ezekiel chapters 38-39 require Russia to be a world power in the last days, something that would not happen if Napoleon conquered Russia. But since when did European dictators take time to read the Bible? So, ambitious Napoleon led his army of 600,000 men into cold and snowy Russia. Things looked rather promising as he took Moscow and laid claim to all sorts of valuable spoils to carry home. Then the temperature dropped to about -40C. When the whole episode was over, only about 30,000 of Napoleon’s soldiers would march back home. He would also leave about 160,000 horses in Russia and some 800 canon. Did all of this stop future dictators from setting their eyes on Russia? Not quite. Hitler tried invading Russia in 1941, only to find his men defeated, being totally unprepared for the snow and harsh weather in the land of Gog. Okay, come to Psalm 48:7: “Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind.” Sometimes God uses the military might of one nation to defeat another. Then sometimes He uses His own “military.” A splendid example is the defeat of the Spanish Armada in the year 1588. King Phillip II of Spain had big plans to convert Europe back to Roman Catholic idolatry, so he decided to sail his “Invincible Armada” up through the English Channel and whip England, thus paving the way for Spain as the next great superpower. But, evidently, God liked King James Bibles more than Mary statues. The Armada left Spain with 130 ships, 8,000 seamen, and around 19,000 soldiers. It sailed up into the English Channel, then the “Protestant winds” (as they are now called) began to blow and completely confounded the efforts of the Spaniards as they found themselves being driven to and fro in the waters and being shot to pieces by the British. They then found themselves in a trap, being prevented by the winds and the British from sailing back the way they came, they had to sail all the way up around the northern tip of Scotland and then back home to Spain. When it was all over, Phillip II had about 60 crippled ships remaining, many of which could not be repaired. About 15,000 men also perished. England went on to bless the world with the King James Bible and the likes of George Whitfield, John Wesley, Charles Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, Isaac Watts, Charles Dickens, Sir Isaac Newton, William Bradford, and Queen Victoria. Speaking of wind and the spread of Roman Catholicism, let’s not forget what happened in the year 1492. Most will readily answer, “That’s when Columbus discovered America.” Although Leif Eriksson and the Vikings, and even the Chinese, might argue that point, we’ll take the point for now – under one condition: it be clearly noted that it was not North America that Columbus discovered and settled. He and his Roman Catholic travel mates had their sights set on our continent, but God had other plans for North America. The winds began to blow, and they blew the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria (so long, St. Mary!) all the way to the West Indies. God has used wind to accomplish His will numerous times in history. Another fine example comes from June, 1940, when 400,000 British and French soldiers were trapped on the north coast of France at Dunkirk. Then, in a very unusual fashion, the English Channel became calm while thick fog and clouds hid the troops from the Germans. This divine protection lasted for nine days while the Allied armies safely evacuated their troops. Churchill said the whole thing was “a miracle of deliverance.” Psalm 107:29-30 says, “He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.” Alright, let’s head into the stormy weather of Psalm 83:13-16: “O my God, make them like a wheel; as the stubble before the wind. As the fire burneth a wood, and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire; So persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm. Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, O LORD.” Would God do that? Would He make someone afraid with a storm? Let’s see . . . America’s relationship with Israel was pretty good for about forty years, and then it began weakening during the Presidency of George H.W. Bush in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Pressures began mounting for a “Palestinian State” to be established for the Jew-hating Arabs. This, of course, meant that Israel would have to give up some land. “Land for Peace” was the buzz phrase. I trust you know how God feels about that. On October 30, 1991, President Bush (Sr.) signed the Oslo Accord at the Madrid Peace Conference. The agreement called for Israel to turn over some of her God-given land in order to appease a bunch of wild-minded terrorists (Gen. 16:12). The President was very happy to reach this agreement, but he wasn’t very happy with what followed the next day. On Halloween a very rare storm formed and headed in the wrong direction for our Eastern Seaboard. (Guess who owns a vacation home on the Eastern Seaboard!) The storm was so rare that a book was written and a movie was made about it, both titled The Perfect Storm. Thirty-foot waves hit Kennebunkport, Maine, and played a real nice “trick” on the President by wrecking his home. The following day, the New York Times had two interesting pictures on the front page. One was a picture of Israeli and “Palestinian” leaders debating at the “Peace Conference.” The other was a picture of the storm damage up in the Northeast. It doesn’t appear that President George W. Bush (#43) learned anything from his father’s mistakes. After all, hurricane Katrina began forming on the same day that Israel completed the Gaza evacuation (August 23, 2005) so that her enemies and God’s enemies could have the land that belongs to Israel alone. This was part of President Bush’s “Roadmap to Peace.” America helped to finance this ridiculous plan—to the tune of $50,000,000—in the Summer of 2005. Within two weeks after Katrina’s tour of New Orleans I ran across this news headline: President's Approval Rating Dips Below 40. God has His way in the whirlwind. Well, back to the Bible. We can see the Master of the Sea at work in Psalm 107:23-30: “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the LORD, and his wonders in the deep. For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits' end. Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.” Amos 4:7 tells us that God sometimes gets very specific in directing the weather: “And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered.” I like that about God. He can be very specific and detailed at times. I know He causes His rain to fall on the just and on the unjust (Mat. 5:45), but that’s only in a general sense. When He wants to, God can be very specific with His weather plans. Shall I illustrate? I shall, indeed . . . The time was August, 1776, and the place was Long Island. We had lost some battles, and it looked like we were going to lose another one as the British began firing away on Fort Moultrie. Then a fog arose at midnight which blinded the two armies from one another. This allowed Washington and his men to retreat safely to New York and ultimately win the war. Alright, get Jonah chapter 1. As you know, God had commanded Jonah to go and preach to the Ninevites, but Jonah had other plans. So verse 4 says, “But the LORD sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken.” Running from God just doesn’t work. Whether you cross the county line or the coast line, God will cross it also and be waiting on you when you reach your destination. Using the forces of nature comes as easy as breathing for Him.Our next stop is Nahum 1:1-6: “The burden of Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite. God is jealous, and the LORD revengeth; the LORD revengeth, and is furious; the LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies. The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers: Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth. The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein. Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him.” There, that pretty much tells the whole story. God has all the forces of nature at His disposal, and He uses them often against His enemies. Zechariah 14:17 states that God will withhold rain from nations that do not come to worship Jesus Christ in the millennial kingdom: “And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain.” If the Lord used weather to accomplish His will in the Old Testament, and He will do likewise in the millennium, then why would one think that He has abandoned doing so today? Okay, let’s step over to the New Testament and read Mark 4:39: “And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.” So, it isn’t just an Old Testament thing, is it? Now, on to the church age in Acts 16:26 with Paul and Silas in jail. God wants them out of jail, so He sends an earthquake: “And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one's bands were loosed.” On to the Great Tribulation in Revelation 11:6: “These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.” Finally, Revelation 16:17-21: “And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great.” God isn’t running short on ammunition. His accumulated wrath of 6,000 years is poured out on the inhabitants of the earth, and there isn’t any confusion about who is responsible for it. Verse 21 says that men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail. So, there it is: from Genesis through Revelation, God uses the weather to accomplish His will. May we always see His hand in nature, not only in the clear and sunny skies, but also in the rain, in the winds, in the storms, and in the hail and the snow. All weather is divine weather. Sometimes we are able to pinpoint specific events that might lead to God intervening with weather, and sometimes we're just generally reminded that we are a nation of iniquity and we deserve far worse than we receive, but it's all divine weather that should turn our eyes upwards to glorify, worship and serve the God of heaven.