Was Katrina Punishment from God?

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from lifesightnews.com, September 6, 2005, with the headline: “Decadence Despite Death and Destruction. New Orleans. Homosexuals, a few of whom already marched Sunday, have rescheduled their planned Southern Decadence Homosexual Festival for tomorrow, despite the death and destruction left behind by hurricane Katrina last week. The event draws 125 thousand homosexual revelers to New Orleans annually. The festival, a six-day festival highlighted by a parade on the Sunday before Labor Day, is a yearly event that earned its reputation by being one of the most unapologetically racy exhibitions of gay life, where outlandish costumes and outdoor sex were the norm, according to a sovo.com report. ‘The shocking callousness of New Orleans’ gay activists towards the severe suffering of its fellow citizens cannot be adequately articulated in a news report,’ said ex-homosexual James Hartline, who depicted the Southern Decadence Festival to World Net Daily as ‘replete with tens of thousands of men and women engaged in public nudity, prostitution, illegal drug use, and destructive public S&M sex. The idea that human beings are continuing to party while hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens are starving, dying, and suffering from a multitude of sicknesses brings into focus the real lack of judgment that these constant advocates of special gay rights demonstrate in a time of crisis,’ Hartline added.”

Tom: Dave, as we just grieved over, in the last segment, the sense of people buying lies and believing things that are so irrational, so illogical, and now we’re looking at this so-called festival. This is a festival of death. These people are dying because of what they’re involved in, and I’m not talking about some divine judgment, I’m talking about just the lifestyle and what it does to their lives.

Dave: Well, it cuts the life approximately in half, very close to it - not quite as much for women as for men. If everyone became homosexuals - and this is their aim, actually; this is why they’re in the schools, this is why they are telling young kids, “Well, try it out. You’ll like it. Maybe you’re a homosexual, too.” And they’re working toward that end. Well, if everyone adopted that lifestyle, it would be the end of the human race. They don’t have babies. It would just be the end. Now, how you can celebrate that, have festivals about that, and gay pride parades, and so forth, and when you study it a little bit - I mean, the filth, the abhorrence of the practices and what they are engaged in, you wouldn’t want to talk about it in public. But they’re down there to display it in public for the world to see without shame, apparently. They have come out of the closet for sure. And I don’t like to say - I would hesitate to say, “Well, it was God who judged New Orleans because of their sin.” But it is one of the most wicked cities in America; it’s like Sodom and Gomorrah in many ways. It also is the most Catholic city in America, and it is the most voodoo city in America.

Tom: Well, Dave, that’s the second thing I wanted to talk about with regard to this so-called festival with regard to Katrina. As this man says, just the lack of consideration for what has gone on there, why you would have a festival…they should be grieving and helping and trying to restore the city in some way. But the issue - we hear this from all circles, Dave. Christians are saying, “This is God’s judgment.” Muslims are saying, “This is God’s judgment on America.” You have…yet Bourbon Street, the French Quarter, and so on, they didn’t have the damage that much of the city had. I don’t know that you could try to make a case that God is judging this city, and so on. First of all, I think God is still in His long suffering mode. I think His judgment, if there is judgment, it comes upon Christians in the sense of Hebrews Chapter 12: Jesus - “Those whom I love I scourge, I chastise,” and so on. Correction, yes, but for believers, I don’t think judgment has come on the world yet. I know it’s going to in a big way, but I have my doubts as to whether this is God’s judgment at all.

Dave: Well, I don’t know, and that’s why I said I wouldn’t say that, but there are a number of correlations every time the US pressures Israel. And again, I’m not trying to make a case for this - maybe these are all coincidences - but you can go back and see, and it was, you know, the US pressuring Israel, “Let’s get out of the settlements.” Of course, it’s the UN and so forth, but some kind of a natural disaster seems to happen.

And again, Tom, I haven’t gone back to document that, and I’m not trying to make a case for that. On the other hand, if we’re talking about judgment, Arafat is getting his judgment now, and he’s not with us anymore. He’s gone to meet his reward, and he thought he would be rewarded by Allah, and he finds out he is in hell and he’s in torment. I think the least concern of Arafat right now is the Middle East. There is something more important than the Middle East or Katrina or whatever goes on in this world, because this is temporary. But you reject Christ, you refuse to accept the payment made on your behalf by Christ on the cross as God laid on Him our sins…He took the full punishment that we all deserve. You do not accept that and gratefully bow before Him, you will then pay it yourself forever and forever and forever. That’s only justice. That’s fairly simple. 

So whatever is going on in this world, whatever the significance of Katrina or anything else, we’ve got to be careful. We had better make our plans and we had better make our provision and accept the peace that God has given us through Christ because, as the Bible says, “It is appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment.”