FireSide Chat II

Dear Teresa

I have been watching the news and it says that there have been over 1000 wild fires burning out of control in California for several days now. Some of them are quite huge and have caused immeasurable damage to wildlife and burned down people's homes. Some of the fires have been uncontainable for days and days, and two fires merged into a bigger and seemingly unstoppable one in the Big Sur area.

California has always had problems with fires, but never on this big of a scale and never quite this disastrous before.

I cannot help but ask this question. Are these fires a judgment of God on California because it's supreme court has been making some very ungodly decisions/laws?

- Wondering

Dear Wondering

I have had several people ask me this same question, so I feel like I should address it. This has actually been a very difficult Fireside Chat to write, and has taken me several hours to write it. That is why it is coming out late in the day. I toyed with a few different approaches, and with how much scripture to include. I finally ended up with this version, which is more me sharing my heart and some discussions I had with God on the topic. I apologize if this seems a light on Scripture. The bible has a lot to say about God's holiness and about His judgment, but I won't be developing those in this particular write-up.

So, are the wild fires a judgment of God against California? Quite frankly, it doesn't take a gift of spiritual discernment or prophetic insight to figure the answer out--the problem is more one of not wanting to believe the answer because America has lived in God's blessing and favor for so long that we hate to accept the idea that our increasing sins and godlessness has finally brought the Lord's hand of judgment upon us.

It is so obvious that even the heathen and unsaved are figuring it out. My husband (who is not yet a believer) told me a joke from the Jay Leno show that he thought was very funny. Jay was reading a statistic that California has the smallest per capita number of people who worship God than in any other state. Then, in the same breath, Jay said "Coincidentally, in other news, there are over 800 wild fires burning out of control in California."

My husband thought it was humorous to tie the fires to lack of faith in God. But even he got the point, as did a lot of other unbelievers. Even the unsaved people are starting to see the correlation between godlessness and the fires. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this is a judgment of God.

The number of wildfires (most of which were started by dry thunder storms, something not common to California), quickly climbed to over 1,000 wildfires burning out of control, and it stayed there for several days. In fact, the State Governor's fire information web page says that there have been 1,459 wild fires started between June 20 and June 30, and over 19,000 people are "committed resources" to fighting that fire. The fires are a huge problem for the state and for everyone who lives in it.

There was no question in my mind that these fires were a judgment from God. I could not escape the fact that the state supreme court legalized gay marriages, and San Francisco started on June 17, 2008, and the wild a fires started a few days later. Gay marriage is not (by far) the only sin issue that the Lord has with California, but it appears that it may be what sparked this unprecedented surge of wildfires burning uncontrollably throughout the state.

We have been fortunate that to date, not that many lives have been lost from the fires, and (all things considered) not that many homes have been destroyed to date. But the fires are still causing a huge problem. The smoke from the fires has made the air quality very bad in many parts of the state--even in parts that the fires have not come near.

For example, in the San Francisco Bay Area where I live, there were 4 or 5 days of "hazardous air quality warnings" released in the past week. It was considered dangerous to do things everyday like have children play in their own back yard, walk your dog, or eat in the patio section of a restaurant. In schools, physical education classes were either canalled or moved indoors. Many Hiking trails and city parks were closed. And even with those precautions, there was a high number of people having respiratory problems. I am told that there was a larger number of new prescriptions written for inhalers and asthma medicine in a one week period than we normally see in a 4-month period.

If you had any doubts that the fire is making things bad in California, let me lay those doubts to rest. In addition to the current problems, (the physical danger from fire destroying things, people loosing their homes and personal possessions, air quality issues, etc), there will be severe economic ones. The state was already in a budget crisis before the fires started. I heard on the news that the cost of fighting one of those fires (97% contained at that time), was over 4.3 million dollars. Multiply that by 1,459 and you get an idea of the economic havoc two weeks of wildfires will wreak--not to mention lost of tourist revenue (which is a huge revenue in California), etc.

So, being a prophetic person, I began talking to God about the fires. I already was pretty sure I knew the answer, but I asked Him if the fires were a judgment on California. He said yes. So then I asked Him what could His people do to turn that judgment away.

I thought back to all the times that I personally have thrown myself on God's mercy and how His mercy has always availed for me. I decided that was a good approach, so I appealed to His great mercy. I asked Him to have mercy on my state, even tough we don't deserve it. His response shocked me. He said, "Teresa, it would not be mercy to let this state continue the way it is going, because the wickedness that would reign (if it went unchecked any longer) would bring much more misery that My hand of correction is bringing now."

So I searched my mind for relevant Bible passages and came up with 2 Chronicles 7:14, "If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land." I focused on the first part of that verse, about humbling ourselves and praying. But God pointed out the second half of that verse: "...and turn from their wicked ways..." He said that praying without a change in the State's behavior could not stay His hand of correction. He used an analogy of when a child (say a rebellious ten-year-old) is naughty, the only way to change their behavior is to punish them for it. If they don't get punished, they will not think there are any negative consequences to the behavior and they will keep doing it.

So I started reminding God of the many people in California who love Him dearly and who serve and honor Him, and who have made Him the Lord in their lives. I reminded him of Christian strongholds in the state, such as Harvest Church in Pasadena, Bethel Church in Redding, just to mention a few. I also reminded Him of the people in my own church, including myself, who loved Him with all of our heart and who were dedicated to serving and obeying Him. I asked the Lord if He would destroy me (and these others) in His judgment against our state. He said, "No, I can protect My own in judgment, just like I protected Jeremiah when Jerusalem fell into captivity." Then God went on to point out that my own life was not as sinless and holy as I supposed. He convicted me of a sin and of an attitude issue.

As soon as He said it, I knew it was true and felt convicted. In response, I am making it a priority in my own life to work on the area of shortcoming that God pointed out to me. I guess the problem is that if we start gaging our holiness by comparing ourselves to others, we can come out looking pretty good. But that is not the gage that God uses--He compares us to His word and to His commands, and we don't always measure up as well as we would like to.

So I began to wonder if this deficiency in my own life disqualified me from praying effectively for my state. I asked God about it, and He told me that He was going to send a judgment angel to talk to me about God's judgment. The thought of that was a little scary for me at first--I wasn't sure if the angel was going to be talking to me about God's judgment on California, or if he would be discussing the inadequacy in my own life that God had pointed out.

The angel did not come right away. I waited in prayer for several hours, but the angel appeared to be a no-show. I finally got fatigued by the prayerful waiting, and turned on the television. I was watching (of all things) a disaster movie called Asteroid. That was when the angel choose to come. Now, I would have felt a whole lot more spiritual if the angel came when I was praying and seeking God. But I was watching a disaster movie when he arrived, and that made me feel carnal and not very spiritual.

The angel carried the holiness of the Lord and was scary. I would have been completely terrified, except that I knew this angel. He'd spoken to me before, on more than one occasion. It was a bit harder to be afraid of him, because I've been with him before and I saw how faithful he is to do and say what God is doing and saying.

I asked him, "Are you the angel bringing the fires to California?"

He said, "I am one of them."

I knew that God had sent him to teach me more about the wild fire judgment that I'd been praying about. The first thing the angel did was to remind me of an earlier lesson he'd taught me--about how God is good and His judgments are good. That lesson was very involved, because it had been a difficult concept for me to wrap my understanding around. I don't have time to develop how the angel taught me this lesson...but suffice it to say that he replayed the lesson in my memory as he stood before me. Remembering the lesson took a lot less time than originally learning it.

Then I starting thinking about this particular angel--he was very passionate about God, and he would carry out God's commands without question, hesitation, or compromise. All the same, this angel has a huge compassion for the people who God sends him to. I never really understood how an angel could have huge such for those who he was destroying in a judgment of God, and yet destroy them with no sense of guilt or remorse. But I eventually came to accept it--and the key to that was in learning that God's judgments are good, not bad, and that God is good and holy, even when He releases judgment on men.

Then the angel began showing me God's good plans for California. God was not angry and wanted to destroy the state in revenge for offending Him. It wasn't like that at all. God wanted to send this huge revival to California, and He wanted to use California to help transform the whole nation.

But there was another power that was trying to get control over the state--a dark spirit of oppression and ungodliness. That spirit is controlling a portion of the state's population, and God's spirit is controlling a portion, and there are some who haven't given their allegiance to either side. The judgment of God on California is not designed to destroy the state or kill the people who comprise the state, but to break off their allegiance to this dark spirit. God wants them to know that following this dark spirit will lead to destruction and misery, but there is grace and restoration for those who turn to God.

The angel told me that despite the vastness and seeming severity of this judgment, it was still one of tender mercy. The angel likened the destruction of the wildfires to a light spanking. I mentioned that from my perspective, it seemed much more devastating than that. So, he explained that God was making His displeasure known, but He was not taking a lot of lives in the process. Our land was being ravished and destroyed because of the sin, but as the people repent and turn back to God, He is able to heal and restore the land.

We tend to view our majestic mountains and trees and scenery and wildlife as the "natural treasures" of the state. But God views the souls of its residents as the "treasures." And He was destroying very few souls in these wild fires. He was making us uncomfortable (possibly even downright miserable) so that we'd drop our pride and stubborn rebellion and begin to embrace His ways. God doesn't want to destroy us, He wants to save and restore us. God doesn't want to destroy the gay couples who got married--He wants to them to come to Him and He wants to love them and transform them. God wants to break the power of sin and oppression off of the people of California and transform it into a stronghold of godliness and prosperity. But in order to do that, He needs to release His judgment and He needs to draw a standard of holiness for California.

I asked the angel what would happen if people continued to resist God and continued to embrace wickedness and sin. He said that the judgments would get increasingly severe. But he also said that there would always be some evidence of God's love and mercy for California because of the many believers in the state who love and honor Him.

God also said that His people (who obey and honor Him because they love Him) do not need to be afraid, because He will take care of them even in the midst of this judgment.