This webauthor goes to two different churches regularly. The pastors of each one emphatically inferred recently that God did not punish the people in New Orleans by hurricane Katrina. I suppose that those two questionable preachers did not mean that people were not harmed by Katrina, but rather than the harm was not a punishment. [I guess then it was instead a reward for New Orleans debauchery]?
The following is what God's Word says about such things:
GENESIS 6:17 = I will bring a flood of waters to destroy all flesh
EXODUS 15:10 = Thou didst blow with Thy wind, the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters
JOB 21:18 = ....they are like straw before the wind, and like chaff that the storm carries away
JOB 27:20-21 = Terrors overtake him like a flood; in the night a whirlwind carries him off.....wind lifts him up and he is gone; it sweeps him out of his place
PSALM 1:4 = The wicked are....like chaff which the wind drives away
PSALM 35:5 = Let them be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of the LORD driving them on!
PSALM 48:7 = By the east wind Thou didst shatter the ships of Tarshish
PSALM 83:13 = ....make them like chaff before the wind
PSALM 107:25 = He commanded, and raised up the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea
PSALM 148:8 = ...stormy wind fulfilling His command
ISAIAH 17:13 = He will rebuke them....before the wind like whirling dust before the storm
ISAIAH 41:16 = You shall winnow them and the wind shall carry them away, and the tempest shall scatter them
ISAIAH 57:13 = ....let your collection of idols deliver you. The wind will carry them off, a breath will take them away
EZEKIEL 13:11,13 = Say to those who daub it with whitewash that it shall fall. There will be a deluge of rain, great hailstones will fall, and a stormy wind break.....I will make a stormy wind break out in my wrath, and there shall be a deluge of rain in My anger
JONAH 1:4 = But the LORD hurled a great wind upon the sea...
NAHUM 1:8 = But with an overflowing flood He will make a full end of His adversaries
LUKE 13:4-5 = ...do you presume that [those upon whom the tower of Siloam fell] were worse offenders than all others....? No, but unless you repent, you will likewise perish
LUKE 17:27 = ....the flood came and destroyed them all
JOHN 5:14 = ....Sin no more, that nothing worse come to you
II PETER 2:5 = ...He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly...
Now, as Job's [innocent?] children were murdered? by Satan's wind which brought down the house in the opening chapter of the Old-Testament book of Job, some conditions are not the result of the victim's sin per se, but that the glory of God might be shown. The aggregate wickedness of the Devil, his demons, and his human cohorts does have a culmulative effect against innocent victims of sin-caused tragedies. For such death-nondeserving victims, the following lyrics are applied:
