I believe God can use natural disasters as means of judgment. But I'm a bit cynical about this at the same time.
If we're going to follow the writer's judgment, then we'd have to accept that the Black Death was God's judgement on the people living in Medieval Asia and Europe.
There's a synopis here, which included the following paragraphs -
https://www.christianforums.com/threads/coronavirus-pandemic-god’s-punishment-or-meaningless-bad-luck.8153192/
The Black Death was a devastating global epidemic of bubonic plague that struck Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s. The plague arrived in Europe in October 1347, when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. People gathered on the docks were met with a horrifying surprise: Most sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those still alive were gravely ill and covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus. Sicilian authorities hastily ordered the fleet of “death ships” out of the harbor, but it was too late: Over the next five years, the Black Death would kill more than 20 million people in Europe – almost one-third of the continent’s population.
It killed almost 1/3 of Europe's population. That's a pretty tough judgement. What had they done in particular to deserve it?
Today, scientists understand that the Black Death, now known as the plague, is spread by a bacillus called Yersina pestis. (The French biologist Alexandre Yersin discovered this germ at the end of the 19th century.)
They know that the bacillus travels from person to person pneumonically, or through the air, as well as through the bite of infected fleas and rats. Both of these pests could be found almost everywhere in medieval Europe, but they were particularly at home aboard ships of all kinds – which is how the deadly plague made its way through one European port city after another.
So the rats and their fleas which were a feature of Medieval life, but particularly on ships, were the carriers. Were they harbingers of divine judgement, or were unsanitary conditions to blame?
.... Many people fled the cities for the countryside, but even there they could not escape the disease: It affected cows, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens as well as people.
In fact, so many sheep died that one of the consequences of the Black Death was a European wool shortage. And many people, desperate to save themselves, even abandoned their sick and dying loved ones. “Thus doing,” Boccaccio wrote, “each thought to secure immunity for himself.”
Apparently God had it in for the cows, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens as well. I wonder what they did to upset Him?
The Black Death epidemic had run its course by the early 1350s, but the plague reappeared every few generations for centuries. Modern sanitation and public-health practices have greatly mitigated the impact of the disease but have not eliminated it.
For centuries it reappeared. But now modern modern sanitation and public health practices keep it largely under control. God's punishment, or a lack of knowledge and public health practices at the time?
Of course God is aware of the Coronavirus, but is it a judgement, or is it a natural outworking of the live animal markets at Wuhan, and the cruel practices carried out there? Is climate change God's punishment, or a natural outworking of our short term stupidity and greed in using up an immense amount of the fossil fuel reserves in a short time?
It all reminds me of a comment by my old pastor during one of his sermons - "Judgement is built in!" (into the system).
Abuse our sexual proclivities, and we end up with sexually transmitted diseases. Get hooked on drugs, and we lose our lives trying to keep up the habit for diminishing returns. Waste fossil fuels that were meant to last for generations and we wind up with climate change. The rich abuse the poor and we end up with Stalin's dictatorship, with a nuclear armed Soviet Union. Treat the Arabs and the Middle East with contempt and we end up with an Islamic stand-off. Fail to apply sanitary practices and we end up with the Black Death. Western Europe treats it's colonial possessions with contempt and it ends up with the First World War. Kill the unborn in a holocaust, and we eliminate the next generation of leaders who would have solved many of the problems we've created. Create enormous levels of debt and we set ourselves up for financial meltdown.
It's built in.
It simply shows the changing attitudes in the early church till now.
