The scenes coming out of Japan are unfathomable.

By now you’ve probably had your fill of grim footage; of mud-filled spaces where bustling towns once were; of city streets lined with endless piles of mangled concrete, iron and decomposing flesh; of bloated bodies washing onto beaches; of morgues overflowing with dead corpses. And, most alarmingly, of the smoking, crumbling nuclear plants that could melt down at any moment, setting off a nuclear apocalypse.

More than for those who perished, our hearts ache for the living. For the thousands mourning the loss of friends and family. For the nearly half a million whose homes and belongings have been smashed and swept away. For those throughout Japan staring at empty supermarket shelves, or in desperate need of heating, or gasoline or medicine. For the 12 million people in Tokyo staring anxiously at the northern horizon, fearful that a nuclear cloud is headed their way.

The international community is rushing to Japan’s side. Money is being raised and bounties of food, fresh water, bedding and medicine are flowing into northern Japan. But while the global scramble to Japan’s aid is admirable, there is a desperate need—one that plagues the people of Japan, as well as those digesting the horror from afar—that remains unfulfilled. When trauma of this magnitude besieges a person, a community, a nation, there is an intense yearning for understanding, for mental and emotional consolation—for assurance that a better future lies ahead.

There is a need for hope.

Yesterday, Japan’s emperor encouraged his people in a televised address to “never give up hope.” It was a valiant and much-needed address, but it did little to provide hope and understanding. Around the world, people are donating money and showering the Japanese with pledges of moral and political support. Since Friday, the international media have descended on Japan and pumped out thousands of stories detailing the unfolding tragedy. But amid this outpouring of empathy, how many have explained why this tragedy occurred, and, most importantly, where to find hope and understanding?

Can hope even been found in trauma of this scale?

It can, more than you can imagine!

Moreover, the more deeply a person is impacted by what’s happening in Japan, the easier it will be for him to access this understanding and hope. In what is a telling glimpse of the hardness of the human heart, it is generally only in the midst of intense trauma that the human mind becomes receptive to godly understanding and hope. Why? Because generally intense suffering produces humility.

And humility is the major prerequisite for godly understanding!

“[T]o this man will I look,” God says in Isaiah 66, “even to him that is poor [needy, humble] and of a contrite [stricken] spirit … ” (Isaiah 66:2). Surely the tragedy in Japan has helped create a comparatively humble attitude and a “contrite spirit” in many Japanese, and perhaps even some onlookers. Overwhelming crises such as this have a tendency to ground us, to remind us of how small, how vulnerable, how insignificant we truly are. Sadly, such humility is often short-lived. Nevertheless, God Himself looks to the person who allows such an attitude to prevail.

To God, true humility gained through catastrophe is a primer for greater understanding.

God’s Tectonic Mouthpiece

In Genesis 1 and 2 God recalls for latter generations the moment He recreated planet Earth. In these chapters we see God working with the physical universe, including the sun, moon and stars, as well as Earth’s atmosphere, its weather patterns, its oceans and its land mass, including the tectonic plates beneath the outer crust. Beyond creating this planet as the means of sustaining plant, animal and human life, and ultimately as the vehicle to facilitate His supreme purpose for mankind, the Bible reveals that God intended to use His material creation as an instrument through which He would communicate with mankind.

It’s only logical that as the master Creator of this planet and all the physical laws that govern it, God has the power to intervene in its operation!

And the Bible teaches, in both Old and New Testaments, that God employs nature, including the weather, agriculture, the animal kingdom—and tectonic activity such as volcanoes and earthquakes—as an instrument through which He communicates with mankind!

In Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, for example, God informs ancient Israel that nature would be a means through which He would bless and curse the nation. Obey me, God says in Leviticus 26, and “I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit” (verse 4). Disobey me, He says, and “I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass: And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits” (verse 19).

Nature was to be a means of measuring whether or not God was pleased with the nation!

Most people are familiar with the story of self-righteous Job. The book of Job reveals the lengths God will go to to break through to an individual He loves. It opens by recounting how God allowed a natural disaster—a large tornado—to destroy Job’s children. In Job 37, the young man Elihu delivers a powerful and beautifully poetic speech to his friend Job in which he recalls God’s power over nature, and how He uses it to communicate with mankind. “[God] loads the thick cloud with moisture; the clouds scatter his lightning. They turn round and round by his guidance, to accomplish all that he commands them on the face of the habitable world. Whether for correction, or for his land, or for love, he causes it to happen” (verses 11-13; Revised Standard Version). Could the Bible be more explicit?

God uses the “habitable world” to communicate with mankind!

Then there’s the book of Isaiah, which focuses largely on end-time events. In chapter 29, the Prophet Isaiah describes one of the means by which God corrects: “Thou shalt be visited of the Lord of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire” (verse 6). Yet again, the Bible teaches that God uses the natural world to communicate with mankind. God could easily have prevented the earthquake in Japan, and the recent one in New Zealand. But He didn’t. The Bible teaches that these terrible disasters are signs of God’s displeasure with mankind.

Perhaps you’re thinking, where’s the hope in that? The Apostle Paul answers: “For the Lord disciplines him whom heloves, and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” (Hebrews 12:6-7; rsv). In other words, correction, even the most painful, gut-wrenching kind, is a mark of God’s love!

Christ’s Imminent Return

Both the Old and New Testaments speak about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the events that will surround His return.

In Matthew 24, the disciples, gathered on the Mount of Olives, ask Jesus what signs will precede His Second Coming. “And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I [Christ] am Christ; and shall deceive many” (verses 4-5). Christ’s first warning was that people—false teachers and ministers—would come in His name, talking about Christ, but not teaching Christ’s message. These false ministers, He said, would deceive many.

Christ’s prophecy continues: “And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences,and earthquakes, in [different] places” (verses 6-7). Notice, in addition to the “wars and rumors of wars”—surely an apt description of the Middle East and North Africa, for example—Jesus told His disciples that His return would be preceded by an uptick in natural disasters.

In fact, Christ stated specifically that before His Second Coming there would be earthquakes in different places!

Notice also, Jesus told His disciples that famine—a shortage of food and water—and then pestilences, or disease epidemics, would accompany these natural disasters. Can you begin to see the hope in the tragic earthquake in Japan? It and the quake that recently decimated Christchurch were prophesied nearly 2,000 years ago—and both are a sign that Jesus Christ is about to return to this Earth!

That may sound preposterous—a callous attempt to spiritualize away the physical pain and mental and emotional anguish millions are suffering. But that is exactly what Jesus Himself prophesied. There simply isn’t any other logical way to interpret that prophecy. For those prepared to believe Jesus Christ, this prophecy in Matthew 24 adds a truly hope-filled dimension to the horrible tragedy unfolding in Japan. While our eyes well and our hearts ache for the victims of earthquakes, this debilitating trauma should arouse a renewed hope and confidence in the fact that Jesus Christ is about to return.

Emotionally, the horror unfolding in Japan is stomach-churning. Prophetically, it’s a sign that the most exciting event ever to occur in the age of man is imminent!

Sadly, too many people will reject this wonderful dimension. They will ignore the Bible’s explicit instruction that God communicates with man via natural disasters, and reject the words of Christ Himself in Matthew 24. Many people, particularly the scholarly, will mock this biblical understanding—even though they themselves have absolutely no answers for what happened in Japan and remain devoid of hope. The tragic result of such arrogance will be an increase in the intensity and regularity with which God communicates with mankind though natural disasters.

Don’t let this be your response! Take the opportunity now to read “Where Was God?” to see the spectacular and enduring hope buried under the rubble in Japan. And if you were moved to learn that Japan’s earthquake was evidence that God has an intense desire to communicate with mankind, wait till you learn the reason why God yearns for a relationship with you! To understand that reason, request your free copy of Mystery of the Ages.

Truly, when your time of intense trauma comes, and when you begin to yearn for understanding and hope, nothing will be more important than reading Mystery of the Ages along with your Bible!