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Earthquake Number One

by Jerry Ousley  
2/07/2014 / Christian Living

We have actually been in two minor earthquakes in our lifetime. Some of you living in Southern California or other parts of the world that are prone to earthquakes will think this to be hardly worth mentioning. There are some who have lived through horrible, terrible earthquakes, so my pitiful experience will seem like a joke to you.

The first earthquake we ever encountered happened around twenty years ago. At that time we were pastors of a small congregation in Crothersville, Indiana. It was on a Wednesday night and we were in church. At that time we had more youth than adults in our congregation so naturally the service was geared toward kids and teenagers.

Suddenly a tremble was felt in the building. It was barely noticeable but you could feel the shaking. "Maybe a big truck just went by," I thought. If that had been the case it must have been a really big truck because I'd never felt the building shake when one went by before. But I reasoned that there must be a logical explanation. "What have those kids done now," was my next thought. You know kids; they get into everything and you never know what to expect next. But it wasn't the kids. I never even thought about an earthquake because in all my forty years (at that time) we'd never had one in Southern Indiana.

But that is exactly what had happened. I can't remember where the epicenter of the quake had been but it was a couple of hundred miles away. We had only felt the outer ripple of the thing.

The Bible records twenty different earthquakes. An earthquake is defined as, "A shaking of the crust of the earth caused by underground shifting of rock in relation to volcanic activity." We could comment on all the deadly, devastating earthquakes in history and speculate as to why we have them, but let's sum it up by saying that they are a phenomenon of nature. Actually they are the result of sin in the earth. They are part of the curse God was forced to place upon man. When God cursed the earth it resulted in all the terrible things that take place in nature; erupting volcanoes, hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, tidal waves, and tsunamis all came about because of it. We live on a beautiful world but just think how beautiful it must have been prior to the curse.

Particularly in the Book of Revelation earthquakes were used by God as punishment. They were intended actually to get man's attention. Sometimes it has worked but more recently it has proven to be an annoyance to man.

There was a time when, after a disaster people turned to God. Great revivals swept across countries as people thought about their sin and repented. As the days rapidly pass, and time grows closer to the second coming of Jesus Christ, it seems that disasters only serve to aggravate mankind more. Instead of turning to God people try to find ways to escape them. We want to have control and man is even attempting to tamper with the weather in order to have it. I read some years ago that the mayor of the Russian city of Moscow reported that he would ban snow from the city. In order to keep his promise he had paid a huge sum of money to have the storm clouds carrying snow seeded so that they would drop their snow before ever entering the city. I haven't heard yet if this worked but somehow it just seems like our artificial manipulation of nature will end up biting us in our behinds. That's my opinion anyway.

Wouldn't it just make more sense and be a whole lot simpler if we'd only acknowledge God instead of trying to handle these things we have no business fooling around with? That doesn't mean that we'd escape the devastating storms and occurrences, but it does mean that we'd have the Lord on our side helping us through them.

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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