According to climate-change advocates, the land known as the lucky country has run out of luck. Recent bushfires and record temperatures have sparked a new debate: Is Australia suffering as an unlucky victim of climate change? Some say the recent fires are a direct result of climate change; others see them merely as a fact of life. Neither addresses the heart and core of why Australia is burdened with an increasingly harsh environment.

Over the last week, South Australia witnessed some of the largest and most destructive fires in decades. The fires torched over 12,000 hectares of land, and consumed 30 homes. While no lives were lost, some compared the recent fires to Ash Wednesday—a fire that claimed the lives of 75 people. The sheer intensity and scale of this week’s fires haven’t been seen since the bush land burned on that Wednesday in 1983.

The fires were a punctuation mark on the end of what has been Australia’s third hottest year on record. In fact, seven of the 10 hottest years in Australia’s history have come since 2002.

Australian professors from Melbourne University have warned that the country will continue to experience more intense heat waves and fires unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.

But are emissions really the biggest cause behind the baked earth and charred landscape now scarring the outskirts of Adelaide?

Few of the people who now sift through the blackened remains of their homes really understand the true cause of the fires. Neither do most bronzed, beach-going Australians stop to consider honestly anything beyond the climate-change narrative that is so often pedaled by the day’s intellectuals. Few actually see, or are even willing to entertain the idea, that the country is actually experiencing the effects of fulfilled prophecy.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has regularly explained the fulfillment of prophecy in our day. The weather that Australia faces is a part of that prophecy. Take a look at the book of Amos. In the April 1996 Trumpet magazine, Mr. Flurry wrote:

The Prophet Amos prophesied about this problem in the end time …. “And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered” (Amos 4:7). God says, “I caused” it! God is the cause. We are being cursed by God! Do we really understand what that means? When we continue to have serious floods and droughts at the same time, it is a warning sign from God. And this is only the beginning.

How few in a godless nation such as Australia will pay attention to the warning signs that are evident all around us? The intellectuals and academics would much prefer the masses to simply palm off responsibility to the ambiguous “climate change,” while continuing to live the way of life that is bringing the curses upon us!

Not facing the real cause of the problem is endemic worldwide. What person considers a natural disaster or an “act of God” as they call it—and then repents and changes? What person looks at man’s immoral lifestyle that runs contrary to God’s law and sees that it brings curses? Mr. Flurry stated in 1991:

Amos is directing his message to the “remnant” (or end-time portion) of Joseph (Amos 5:15; 6:6). The story of Joseph and his two sons—Ephraim and Manasseh, or modern-day Britain and America—is in Genesis 48:3-5, 10-20; 49:22-26. Mr. Armstrong covered this very well in his book The United States and Britain in Prophecy.Why can’t the land bear all of our words? [Amos 7:10]. Our message would not phase them unless there were serious problems plaguing the nations! The people try to close their minds to the coming catastrophe. But God’s Word won’t allow them to hide behind deceptions.

To look at the drought-stricken outback and believe it is merely the work of climate change is a dangerous idea. Even if the planet is warming, the far greater danger is Australia’s godless society and the resultant curses to come.

Order and read our free booklet Why ‘Natural’ Disasters? It explains in detail how these fires, floods, earthquakes, tornados and tsunamis are more than just the results of climate change. They are a warning. And we must pay attention.