Gatlinburg and the Terrors of Fire

Image attribution: Kyle Simourd/flickr/cc license

Fire Danger

Recent news stories have ignited our imaginations as stories about the Gatlinburg, Tennessee fires both terrify and excite us. People report having to choose if it is smarter to hunker down and hope the fires pass, or to make a run for it between walls of flame on both sides of the road. This would be about like playing Russian roulette with all chambers of the handgun loaded. There is not much upside to it.

Every year lately we have watched on our televisions, and iPads, and computers as fires ravage California and almost every other state of the union. Now they have hit Tennessee. It has a whole lot of us asking if there is a larger meaning to all this. Is this just bad luck or is heaven sending us a message? And if there is supposed to be a message what might it be? How can we figure out what the fiery words mean? If God is speaking it would, it seems, be good to know His language. Fires may not be as sure to translate as Greek or Hebrew but they definitely get our attention in a hurry.

I noticed that when God spoke to ancient Israel about their national sins He warned them saying:

The Lord roars from Zion, and from Jerusalem he utters His voice; and the shepherds pasture grounds mourn, and the summit of [Mount] Carmel dries up (Amos 1:2).

When God Roars

It captured my attention that the way in which He uttered His voice was that He roared. The way that God roared was to bring drought, “the summit of Carmel dries up.” Hence God does speak through events as well as the written word. Gatlinburg, and large swaths of the southeastern US, suffered months of drought prior to the recent fires so maybe He was roaring to a nation whose ears were, for the most part, stopped. This is not unusual. When God roars men often hear nothing. Our sinful natures are typically deaf to God’s voice until He mercifully causes our ears to hear. When the fires ignite after the drought, that is when we start to hear. Our eyes are filled with terrible images and our hearts soften a bit. A tender moment arrives. The Spirit of God awakens us to the fact that perhaps God has a controversy with us.

Our natural tendency, like any response from the natural man, is to stop listening as soon as the rains come. The voice of God subsides and we soon fall back to sleep. This is what happened in Israel and surrounding nations in Amos’ time. It is why Amos kept up his message about fire.

So I will send fire upon the house of Hazael, and it will consume the citadels of Ben-hadad (Amos 1:4)

So I will send fire upon the wall of Gaza, and it will consume her citadels (Amos 1:7).

So I will send fire upon the wall of Tyre, and it will consume her citadels (Amos 1:10).

So I will send fire upon Teman, and it will consume the citadels of Bozrah (Amos 1:12).

The fiery threats began with Israel but God expanded that warning to pagan nations all around. This fact should sound an alarm that will awaken us and bring better sense. The Lord speaks not only to Israel but to all nations about their national sins. He condemns Damascus because “they threshed Gilead with implements of sharp iron” referring to acts of unjust war. God judged Gaza, “because they deported an entire population” and judged Edom, “because he pursued his brother [Israel] with the sword” (another unjust war).

Judgment & Repentance

Towering flames consuming a parched land are the voice of God roaring, maybe we ought to listen. Americans are not such an apple of God’s eye that He will not enter into judgment against us. Maybe all this smoke in our nostrils should turn our thoughts toward repentance so we might be a nation showered with His grace instead of burning under His anger. But where do we start? What does repentance mean in this context? To be specific here in our application, maybe we ought to review our policies for warfare. Are we like Damascus, threshing other nations with implements of sharp iron? Maybe we should check to see if our wars, when measured by biblical standards, are possibly unjust. Perhaps we should ask where in God’s word does He reveal any moral principle whereby we should disperse armies all across the globe? Where may we discover the Scriptural authority to act as the world’s policeman (particularly when the Bible never even discusses any policemen to begin with)?

It would be hard not to conclude that we are guilty as charged. Maybe we ought to review our actions to see if we, like Gaza, have “deported an entire population.” Do we participate in this sin? Do we deport entire populations? Maybe we do not think our actions are sinful. Possibly we believe our nation stands above God’s law. Trying to excuse ourselves from the dictates of God’s law puts us in a precarious position. Nations may be punished with famine, warfare, and fire. Unrepentant individuals will be judged with these and then thrown in the lake of fire. We ought to hear the voice of God and repent. If we don’t, likely we should drill for fire.

Dr. Don Schanzenbach
Mission to Restore America