In the thirteenth century, two Mongol fleets under Kublai
Khan attacked Japan. On both occasions,
the Mongol invasion fleets were ultimately destroyed by timely typhoons that
the Japanese came to know as kamikaze
or “divine wind.” The Japanese believed
that the storms were summoned by the gods to protect their homeland. Hundreds of years later, during WWII, the
term kamikaze was adopted by the
Imperial Japanese government to describe suicide pilots who crashed their
planes into American ships.
Now it is possible that another divine wind has again
changed the course of history. According
to an Examiner
analysis of exit poll data from the 2012 presidential election, Hurricane
Sandy played a crucial role in the election.
In the days after the final debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama,
polls showed a slight Romney lead with the president polling below 50 percent
in most swing states. Then, on October
29-30, Hurricane Sandy struck the Mid-Atlantic States, causing flooding and
heavy damage from Washington, D.C. to New York City.
In the wake of the hurricane, polling data from both Rasmussen
and Gallup
showed a bump for the president. Many
observers attribute this to the perception of bipartisanship and leadership
that Obama received as he toured storm damaged areas of New Jersey with
Republican Governor Chris Christie. The
bump eventually moved the needle in the swing states enough to give Obama slim
victories in Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania and other crucial
states. Examiner’s
analysis of exit polling showed that 64 percent of voters said that the
president’s response to the hurricane was a factor in their vote and 62 percent
of these voters chose Obama.
It is interesting to consider the
possibility of whether Hurricane Sandy was a divinely directed storm. In Biblical history, God’s use of natural
phenomena to change the course of human events is well established from the
flood of Noah to Moses parting the sea.
Even in U.S. history, there have been instances of divine intervention. One such case was the Battle
of Long Island in the Revolutionary War in which George Washington and the
Continental Army were saved from British annihilation by a miraculous fog. More direct divine intervention has been
cited in the U.S.
victory at Midway in WWII.
If Hurricane Sandy did represent
God’s intervention in the American electoral process, what would the Almighty
have hoped to gain by influencing Americans to vote for Barack Obama? Was it a divine rejection of the Republican
Party and its ideals or something else?
Could a second Obama term be a blessing for the country or a curse?
Some clues can be found in recent
events. A Boston art exhibit recently
made news when a painting depicting the
president as Christ-like figure with a crown of thorns in a pose that
mimicked the crucifixion was displayed at a public gallery. Entertainer Jamie
Foxx recently referred to Obama as “our lord and savior, Barack Obama” at
the Soul Train Awards. Before the
election at the Democratic National Convention, a motion to add a reference to God
to the Democratic platform was almost rejected. The delegates had to be polled three times
before the chairman deemed the motion to have passed by a very close voice vote. In the Ten Commandments (Exodus
20), God says, “You shall have no other gods before me.”
The state of the United States in
general also indicates a country in rebellion against God. For example, 54 million babies have been
legally killed in the United States since the Supreme Court ruled that abortion
was a constitutionally protected right in 1973 according to an estimate by the American Life
League. Under President Obama’s
health care reform law, abortion will be funded by tax dollars in spite of the
president’s promises to contrary according to an analysis by the American
Center for Law and Justice. The
United States has moved from tacit acceptance of abortion to official
government approval and subsidies.
More recently, the movement to
force acceptance of same-sex marriage has gained steam as well. President Obama became the first president to
openly
endorse government recognition of same-sex marriage in spite of his
professed Christianity and the numerous religious
and secular objections to redefining marriage. In Charisma
magazine, Franklin Graham, head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic
Association, said that President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage is
tantamount to “shaking his fist in
God’s face.”
Many have used the decline of heterosexual marriage in
America to justify acceptance of same-sex marriage. Married couples now make up less than half of
U.S. households according to the Economist. The
magazine calls marriage “a luxury for educated and affluent.” Government entitlement programs have long had
the effect of discouraging marriage. As a result, fewer
poor people marry even though there is a very strong correlation between marriage
and financial stability. The assault on marriage was taken to its
logical conclusion in President Obama’s “Julia” ad from 2012 in which the government became a substitute for a
husband.
The Obama Administration has also
spearheaded an assault on religious freedom.
The attacks on religious freedom often involve religious opposition to
abortion or same-sex marriage and free speech issues. Health care workers are compelled
to perform abortions. Military
chaplains are performing same-sex marriages in military chapels in violation
of the Defense of Marriage Act. Additionally,
Obamacare mandates that all Americans purchase coverage
for contraceptive and abortifacient drugs, even if they don’t want them or are
morally opposed to them. The Obama
Administration went so far as to have the maker of a controversial anti-Islam
film arrested and asked Google to remove
the film from Youtube.
Chai Feldblum, Obama’s head of the
EEOC, has openly said that religious freedom is a lower priority than sexual
freedom. Quoted in a 2010 Examiner
article, she said, “I'm having a hard time coming
up with any case in which religious liberty should win. Sexual liberty should win in most cases.
There can be a conflict between religious liberty and sexual liberty, but in
almost all cases the sexual liberty should win because that's the only way that
the dignity of gay people can be affirmed in any realistic manner.”
Abroad, the president’s Israel
policy is the most hostile of any American president. The United States and Israel have
historically had a close relationship.
The U.S. was the first
country to recognize the new nation of Israel in 1947. America has long supplied the Jewish state
with military assistance, including vital supplies that helped Israel survive
the Yom Kippur War in 1973. The U.S. has
often been Israel’s only friend in the United Nations when Arab countries and
their allies often try to pass resolutions condemning Israel while all but
ignoring Arab terrorist attacks against Israelis.
In 2011, President Obama became the
first
president to ask that Israel return to pre-1967 borders. Such a move would require Israel to evacuate its
capitol of Jerusalem and return large swaths of land to the Arabs, leaving the
remainder of the country indefensible.
One of Obama’s earliest diplomatic moves in 2009 was to request a unilateral
freeze on Israeli settlement of the West Bank. In the months prior to the 2012 election,
Obama declined to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he
came to the U.S.
The Obama Administration has also reportedly
restrained Israel from attacking nuclear weapons facilities in Iran. Iranian nuclear weapons threaten not only
Israel, but the U.S. as well. Since the
election, President Obama announced opposition to new sanctions on Iran that
received unanimous and bipartisan support in the Democratic-controlled senate.
Considering that the United States
is outside of God’s will, it is possible that God used Hurricane Sandy to set
the stage for divine judgment. In fact,
divine judgment on the United States may have begun long before Hurricane
Sandy.
Some idea of judgment can be
obtained from Romans
1:18-32 in which God “gave over” a sinful and rebellious society “to a
depraved mind.” Paul writes that the
effect of this depraved mind is that “They have become
filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full
of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they
invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.” One aspect
of divine judgment is social decay that results from turning away from God’s
principles and commandments. As society
becomes more depraved, the societal costs of social diseases, crime, welfare, greed
and corruption increase, placing an ever greater strain on the nation as a whole.
Other aspects of divine judgment can
be seen from the ancient
Israelite history in the Old
Testament. Ancient Israel and Judah were
divinely established nations. God had
promised Abraham that he would “make you a great nation; I will bless you
and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will
curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be
blessed" (Gen
12:2-3).
When the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were established in Canaan
hundreds of years later, their history followed a pattern of prosperity, rebellion
and judgment. When times were good, the
people of Israel would reject God’s commandments and face judgment in the form
of internal strife, wicked leaders, national decline, and, finally, total
defeat and enslavement. The people
assumed that, as the recipients of God’s promise, they were immune to God’s
judgment. They could not fathom that God
would use heathen nations like Babylon and Assyria to punish his chosen people. Many Americans make the same mistake today,
even without a specific promise to bless America.
It is likely that America’s judgment will
follow the same pattern. According
to USA
Today, Munich Re, an insurance company, released a report just prior to
Hurricane Sandy that noted that the number of natural disasters is increasing
worldwide, but the biggest increases have been in North America. This includes hurricanes like Sandy and
Katrina, tornados, fires, droughts, and floods.
America has experienced prosperity and the
following bust. The 2008 real estate
crash ushered in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Although the recession is technically over,
the economy has not recovered. President
Obama’s stimulus spending has set the stage for a debt crisis that could
permanently hobble the American economy.
Another possibility is that there may be
more terrorist attacks on the scale of the September 11 or larger. It is not unlikely that the U.S. will be the
target of an Iranian nuclear attack, possibly a catastrophic attack using electromagnetic
pulse technology.
Such an attack could destroy the majority of the electrical capacity
that makes modern American life possible.
Divine
judgment of America may be part of God’s grand plan as described by Jesus in
the Mount Olivet
Discourse,
John in the Revelation and various other prophets throughout the Bible. Many theologians
believe that America must decline and fall away to set the stage for the final
end-times Battle of Armageddon in which the world aligns against Israel (Rev. 16:16). This theory was described in a September 2012
article on Examiner.com and a 2009
article on CaptainKudzu. If Israel is the key to the end-times and the
U.S. is the protector of Israel, then the U.S. must be removed from the
picture. This could be through an
economic collapse, a military catastrophe, or a combination of disasters.
If the United States is being judged by God, is the future
preordained or can we avert a national disaster? The Bible promises “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” (2
Chron 7:14).
Last
summer, Billy Graham called on Americans to repent, writing on his website “My heart aches for America and its deceived people. The wonderful news
is that our Lord is a God of mercy, and He responds to repentance. In Jonah’s
day, Nineveh was the lone world superpower—wealthy, unconcerned, and
self-centered. When the Prophet Jonah finally traveled to Nineveh and
proclaimed God’s warning, people heard and repented. I believe the
same thing can happen once again, this time in our nation.”
As our national debt piles up at an alarming rate and Iran
grows closer to a nuclear weapon each day, time may be running out quickly.
Originally published on Examiner.com:
http://www.examiner.com/article/divine-wind-may-have-boosted-obama-to-second-term?cid=db_articles
http://www.examiner.com/article/divine-wind-may-have-boosted-obama-to-second-term?cid=db_articles
Photo credit: NASA/Wikimedia
2 comments:
Marilyn Vos Savant of Parade explains the unusual factors involved in Hurricane Sandy:
In this case several factors not directly related to climate change converged to generate the event. On Sandy’s way north, it ran into a vast high-pressure system over Canada, which prevented it from continuing in that direction, as hurricanes normally do, and forced it to turn west. Then, because it traveled about 300 miles over open water before making landfall, it piled up an unusually large storm surge. An infrequent jet-stream reversal helped maintain and fuel the storm. As if all that weren’t bad enough, a full moon was occurring, so the moon, the earth, and the sun were in a straight line, increasing the moon’s and sun’s gravitational effects on the tides, thus lifting the high tide even higher. Add to this that the wind and water, though not quite at hurricane levels, struck an area rarely hit by storms of this magnitude so the structures were more vulnerable and a disaster occurred. One way global warming may have contributed is that the area’s sea level is somewhat higher than it was a century ago. A bit of good luck: Tides would have been even higher if the moon had been closer to us. Instead, it was just a few days from apogee, the point in its orbit where it’s farthest away.
http://www.parade.com/askmarilyn/2013/01/20-superstorm-sandy-global-warming.html
Marilyn Vos Savant of Parade explains the unusual factors involved in Hurricane Sandy:
In this case several factors not directly related to climate change converged to generate the event. On Sandy’s way north, it ran into a vast high-pressure system over Canada, which prevented it from continuing in that direction, as hurricanes normally do, and forced it to turn west. Then, because it traveled about 300 miles over open water before making landfall, it piled up an unusually large storm surge. An infrequent jet-stream reversal helped maintain and fuel the storm. As if all that weren’t bad enough, a full moon was occurring, so the moon, the earth, and the sun were in a straight line, increasing the moon’s and sun’s gravitational effects on the tides, thus lifting the high tide even higher. Add to this that the wind and water, though not quite at hurricane levels, struck an area rarely hit by storms of this magnitude so the structures were more vulnerable and a disaster occurred. One way global warming may have contributed is that the area’s sea level is somewhat higher than it was a century ago. A bit of good luck: Tides would have been even higher if the moon had been closer to us. Instead, it was just a few days from apogee, the point in its orbit where it’s farthest away.
http://www.parade.com/askmarilyn/2013/01/20-superstorm-sandy-global-warming.html
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