Posted October 13, 2026
While Hurricane Isaias has devastated the Gulf Coast and beyond, large waves from Post-Tropical Storm Rachel slammed into homes in Long Beach, California, over the weekend. Some beachfront houses appeared close to collapsing.
This as Hurricane Simon pounded the coast of west-central Mexico; the still-powerful storm is expected to move inland later in the week. And the government of Panama declared a state of emergency after two powerful earthquakes and their aftershocks caused damage in all ten of the country’s provinces and two indigenous territories. The earthquakes on Friday toppled buildings; seismologists recorded more than one hundred aftershocks.
Some of the bad news in the news is directly attributable to human sin, as with the shooting that left nine dead in Erie, Pennsylvania, and the Houthi strike on an airport in Saudi Arabia that killed thirteen. When a man entered a tiger enclosure at a wildlife park in northern England and was killed by one of the animals, misused freedom collided with nature in a tragic way.
But what do we make of disasters with no apparent human agency? Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and the like that are entirely acts of nature? Insurance companies typically call such events outside human control “acts of God.” Their terminology raises several important questions:
Some theologians assert that because God is sovereign over creation (cf. Psalm 115:3), all that happens must occur by his express will and design. In this view, God caused Hurricane Isaias and the other disasters we’ve noted today.
The opposite view espoused by John Stuart Mill and others is that God is not omnipotent and thus does not cause all that happens in the world. Some deists went so far as to say that God created the world but does not intervene miraculously in it, picturing him as a divine Clockmaker who made the universe and now watches it “run down.”
The latter option is clearly unbiblical. There are seventeen miracles recorded in the Gospels, among them eight nature miracles, six exorcisms, and seventeen healings. Paul asked regarding Jesus’ resurrection, “Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?” (Acts 26:8). If God had the power to create the universe (Genesis 1:1) and continue its creation today (Colossians 1:16–17), obviously he has the power to intervene in ways we consider miraculous.
The former option is more relevant here. By one conception of sovereignty, if anything happens apart from the express will of God, he is no longer sovereign.
We can identify a caveat with regard to human freedom: God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4) and thus is “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). However, unless we are universalists, we must admit with Scripture that not all are saved and reach repentance. To the contrary, “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15).
But it is not a denial of God’s sovereignty if he chooses to create us in his image with free will (Genesis 1:27) and then chooses to honor that freedom. If I allow my children to drive my car and they wreck it, they do not deny my paternal sovereignty; if they wrestle the keys from me first, that is a different story.
Natural disasters are a separate category. If recent hurricanes and earthquakes occurred apart from God’s sovereign control of his creation, he would seem not to be sovereign. There is no human agency here to blame and thus no allowance for freedom to be granted by the Lord.
There are clearly times in Scripture when God does cause natural disasters, from plagues in Egypt to natural judgments against unrepentant sinners in Revelation. There are also numerous times, as noted earlier, when he intervenes in nature, proving his capacity to control what he creates.
However, one of the marks of the Creator’s magnificent design is the fact that the universe operates according to natural laws. From ancient Greece to today, thinkers have identified a number of “universal laws of nature,” fundamental and unchanging principles that govern its operation.
Biogenesis (life comes from life), gravitation, thermal dynamics, the conservation of energy, and the laws of chemistry are just a few examples. They illustrate the Lord’s declaration that he “established my covenant with day and night and the fixed order of heaven and earth” (Jeremiah 33:25). It is an expression of his sovereignty to allow the universe to operate according to laws he sovereignly created for it.
At the same time, God continues to engage actively in his creation as he “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3).
So we can conclude that God created the world to function according to natural laws he created for its operation, but we can also note that he sometimes intervenes to act in ways we consider miraculous. The question is, which is which? When is a hurricane simply a naturally occurring event, and when is it the direct result of divine action?
As you can see, we’ve run out of space in today’s article and thus will continue tomorrow. But let’s end on this practical note: When we align our lives with our Father’s sovereign will, we experience his best (Romans 12:1–2). As Andrew Murray noted,
“God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to him.”
Who has such responsibility for your life today?
“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” —Abraham Kuyper
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