It can be two things…
Explicit judgments from God that I can specifically affirm as such? Whatever the percentage is between those explicitly identified in Scriptures as being such, compared to the total number of earthquakes in the entire history of the world.
No good math involved, but I’d guess somewhere around 0.0001%, maybe?
If one doesn’t mind introducing extraneous miracles, earthquakes could all be due to plate tectonics, but God knowing the future could hold some of them till the right moment.
Interestingly after I did research on “the Big One” for the Cascadia zone I had a couple of nightmares of that earthquake hitting. In the dream it wasn’t the shaking that was scary, it was buildings snapping into pieces and the shaking just going on and on and on . . . they say the coming Cascadia event could shake continuously for eight minutes. I definitely hope the Lord holds it off till I’m gone!
They’re the ones who when reading the prophets condemning some evil or another always say, “Well that’s about those people”. When I led a Bible study through Isaiah I made a point of reminding everyone at the start of every evening that the best principle is to always assume the prophet is talking about you until demonstrated otherwise.
Good call.
The point is that those events weren’t specifically God’s judgment, but that they were indicative of what everyone deserves – kind of like saying, “You think you’re special? Sorry!”
I’ve wondered what would have happened if they had recognized Who Jesus is (note that this is an explicit reference to Himself as God). I can’t see any positive outcome; I’d say if all of Jerusalem had rallied to Jesus in recognition of their Messiah that the trashing of the city would have just come sooner as the Romans would not have put up with a subject city all following someone else, especially when less-informed zealots would have been waving swords and knives around.
I’d say that Jesus’ earlier point was that judgment is what we should expect as a matter of course, that it should be the menu of events every day except for God’s grace, and that only if people lived in a condition of repentance would judgment be held off. People read the Old Testament parts where God seems harsh and they recoil from it, but the reality is that the harsh parts are where He is dealing with us as we deserve. What should jump out from the pages is that we are all outlaws yet God doesn’t stomp us all.
From that perspective the Flood was a warning to all the generations since: that was what we also deserve, but God withholds His arm of judgment for the sake of Christ.
From the perspective that we all fail to live up to God’s wishes, all earthquakes are judgment – that they aren’t continuous everywhere is the real miracle.
Given Jesus’ words about the tower that fell, I’d say that the point is that both none yet all earthquakes are judgment, that we all deserve to have towers fall on us unless we repent. With every earthquake we should be saying, “There but for the grace of God go I”. Each earthquake shouldn’t make us ask what special sin God was aiming at, it should make us ask why we deserve to not get hit with one.
This is part of all creation “groaning”: we are its burden, we are the affliction that the cosmos bears.
Concur, well said.
“those who propose that a natural event is the result of “God’s judgement” almost never think it is God’s judgement on them. Funny that.”
A very good and important point. Jesus warned that non-natural disasters should be seen as prompts to repent, not as proof that those affected were worse than us (Luke 13:1-5).
It is quite plausible that Matthew included mention of the quakes in part because he saw them as having some eschatological significance. Perhaps that’s why he mentioned them and other authors didn’t. But that doesn’t indicate that they were fictions; that question depends on what evidence we do or don’t have for any shaking. Moving the stone would create some level of shaking, though just how much cannot be determined.
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