The Tsunami in SE Asia—Divine Punishment?
Rev. Angus Stewart argues that natural disasters like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami are divine judgments upon the ungodly, citing Westminster Standards theology against Ian Paisley's claim that punishments belong only to the world to come. The article defends the Reformed doctrine that God sovereignly ordains both inward and outward punishments in this present age while distinguishing the experience of calamity for God's elect from that of the reprobate.
Rev. Angus Stewart In a day of political correctness and evasions in church and state, many people in N. Ireland look to Ian Paisley to “tell it like it is.” Thus it is all the more important that his repeated, emphatic statements (Belfast Telegraph, 5 January, 2005) that “disasters are not punishments” and that “Punishment for sins belongs not to this world but to the world to come” should not be received as biblical truth. Rev. Paisley’s statements expressly contradict the Westminster...