There is a way which seemeth right unto a man…

(Prov 14:12a) 

Judgement? Consequence? Or…?

It was a relatively cool day on Tuesday the 10^th of December 2019 in Sunbury Victoria, barely getting above 18^c. It was raining a little over night and the roads were wet in the morning. When I rode out of Sunbury there was a light drizzle I had to wipe continually from my helmet, and there was not a sign of blue sky anywhere. You can imagine therefore my surprise when I later received a message from a member of my congregation saying, “Prayer request!! Please pray for the bushfires around your area to go out…”. There were no lightning strikes, no blazing heat, no strong north wind, but there was a bushfire? The natural question comes to mind, how did it get started? 

As I write this there are over 100 fires blazing across NSW. Over 700 homes have been destroyed and there has been loss also of life. It is a tragic and heartbreaking situation that has cost both property and lives.

Fires have been a part of the Australian life for generations. We live in a large country that experiences all the diversity of weather from the southern to the northern states. Fires on scales such as this are not new, but the frequency of them in our nation is another matter, so too the manner in which they are lit.

According to a recent piece in the Sydney Morning Herald titled “Arson, mischief and recklessness”, 87% of the 62,000 fires Australians suffer annually are man-made.^[1] That also explained the fire in Sunbury on that cool day, it was arson, a deliberate immoral criminal act of an individual (or individuals), without the ethical fortitude of considering the act as right or wrong. 

The same article in the Sydney Morning Herald speaks of the current fires that are “threatening to engulf Queensland and NSW”, as also being man-made. It states that a study of satellite imagery confirms that of 113,000 fires that raged from 1997-2009, 40 percent were deliberately lit and 47 percent accidental, totalling 87 percent of our fires as a direct result of “Arson, mischief and recklessness”.

That arson is the standard state-of-play when it comes to today’s bushfires, is made evident by the Chief Commissioner of Victoria police immediately after the Black Saturday fires of 2009 in Victoria, that fire claimed 180 lives and destroyed complete communities and towns; Christine Nixon stated that “all fire sites would be treated as crime scenes”^[2]

God’s Judgement?

November 17^th the Guardian ran a report condemning Israel Folau for stating in a sermon that the current state of fires in NSW were a result of God’s judgment upon Australia for passing laws to legalize abortion and same sex marriage. The Australian Prime minister Scott Morrison, who professes to be a Christian, was quoted as saying Israel Folau’s comments were “appallingly insensitive”.^[3]

Israel Folau defended the motive behind his sermon as that which desires to see all Australians turn back to the truth of God’s word. 

Folau was citing the evident turning away from Biblical norms as that which precedes certain disasters. He linked the unrighteousness of immoral laws and the current state of fires as ‘God speaking to Australians’! Israel Folou made it clear that he believes this is not coincidental; and the world that rejects the Bible is naturally in uproar^[4].

The Natural Consequence of Immorality

There is a natural consequence to immorality that can certainly be considered as a “Judgement”. 

God had created this world to function and run in accord with his law used and employed faithfully; Henry Ford created the automobile to function and run in accord with the appropriate fuel used and employed observantly. When man replaces Gods law with that which is directly opposed to Gods law, the world breaks down, just as when we put the wrong fuel in a motor vehicle. 

In other words, the dysfunctional vehicle is the direct judgment upon the wrong fuel, it is the natural consequence of deliberately denying what the Ford Automobile was designed to function properly with. In just such a manner is the deliberate denial and replacement of Gods law for that which will not permit the world to function properly. 

When man has rejected absolute moral laws and replaced them with laws he creates to suit himself, it should be of no surprise that the culture will become just as subjective to common morality. 

The fires of NSW and QLD have been deliberately lit by those who have employed precisely the same standards that murders 100,000 babies through abortion every year in Australia. There is no difference between the subjective ethics of abortion and homosexuality as there is over any other deliberate immoral act. When a moral absolute is denied, there are no morals! Everything becomes a matter of preference and all the consequences for which society bare the cost, are the direct judgement upon the wrong moral code normalised in that society. 

Crimes such as these against our civilisation, will only increase as society continues to normalise immoral behaviour; Israel Folou called for a return to the functional Laws of creation identified in scripture, in the hope that such ‘judgements’ will cease.

How Did We Get Here So Quickly?

I have logs in my backyard that I chop into smaller pieces in order to burn in the fireplace for the cold winter nights, some of them are full logs and can’t be chopped directly. The first thing I look for is a small crack in the log where I can place the thin end of a wedge, I know that if I can get the thin end of the wedge in, I can eventually split the log completely, this is how godless laws have come in to split apart God’s laws that once blessed us.

When Abortion laws were first put forward to the Australian society, they were promoted as a rarity and only under certain conditions, today it is abortion-on-demand with no questions asked, even to the time of birth. 

The “judgement” that will naturally follow the denial of ‘the sanctity of life’ through the passageway of abortion will be such as Involuntary Euthanasia, where a person is ‘legally’ terminated apart from their expressed wish to remain alive. This occurs to more than 52% of patients who are 80 years or older in the Netherlands today; while those with diseases, other than cancer, it is 67.5%. According to the report, the decision to kill the “patient” was not even discussed with them in over 77% of cases^[5].  

When same sex marriage was introduced to Australians it was pushed as “Equality” and inclusivity for homosexuals, and less than two years later we are being pressured into accepting that boys can be girls and girls can be boys and each of these binary groups can be somehow morphed into a further 130+ genders. Any denial of this as ‘true and right’ is harshly condemned. The acceptance of homosexuality as morally equivalent to those who can biologically begin a family, will have consequences well beyond the apparent.

The “Judgement” that will naturally follow government sanctification of homosexuality will vary from things as menial as the destruction of women’s sports (Biological women)^[6], persecution of other views, to a dramatic increase in mental health disorders and suicide^[7], as well as normalising pederasty and even paedophilia .

All this simply because the feelings based justification of the acts are the only justifications employed. If only feelings justify homosexuality, so too feelings justify pyromania and thereby any other crime. This will be where Isaiah 5:20 will come into its own, as many will call ‘evil good’.

A Hammer Can Build Or Break!

In the building industry a hammer can be used to build and construct items with function, or it can be used to break down those same items. Gods law, from which the Bible teaches this world is built upon, is designed to bless its inhabitants. The ten commandments that were given and from which Australia’s past laws were built, blessed our nation and the western world abundantly, but when the law of God is replaced with the law of man, the world no longer functions properly, the blessing becomes a curse (Deut 30).  The destruction of God’s law by man will have the natural effect of destroying man, Scripture itself made that clear in Genesis 3, but small hints such as the below text are replete in the Bible.

“He made a pit, and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made. His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate” (Ps 7:15-16)

In summary, when the moral standards of our society have degenerated to the point where even the highest echelons of our governing bodies legalize the most immoral acts, we cannot therefore logically expect anything less than a circular justification of all other forms of immorality, including pyromania. 

Society changed in the western world when the Gospel was proclaimed, we need to return to this fundamental call upon our lives as Christians. Proclaim the Gospel and be a light-filled blessing to this lost world.

God bless you, Pr Edi Giudetti.

^[1] https://www.smh.com.au/national/arson-mischief-and-recklessness-87-per-cent-of-fires-are-man-made-20191117-p53bcl.html

^[2] [Callick, Rowan & Akerman, Pia (10 February 2009). “Police track arsonists responsible for Victoria bushfires”. The Australian. Archived from the original on 13 February 2009. Retrieved 10 February 2009.]

^[3] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/nov/18/israel-folau-says-bushfires-and-drought-are-gods-punishment-for-same-sex-marriage-and-abortion

^[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50455162

^[5] https://bioethics.georgetown.edu/2017/08/review-of-countries-where-euthanasia-has-been-legalised-increaing-of-involuntary-euthanasia-without-consent-by-patients/

^[6] https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/04/male-transjacking-will-ultimately-end-womens-sports/

^[7] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/executive-summary-sexuality-and-gender