Bryan Fischer kicked off his radio program yesterday with a lesson from the Book of Joel explaining that natural disasters, military defeats and economic catastrophe are always warnings from God to repent.

“God uses military defeats, natural disasters, economic catastrophes,” he said, “they are God’s way of rousing a deaf nation. These things are megaphones that God uses to call a wandering and wicked nation back to himself in repentance and prayer.”

“So the bottom line with these catastrophes,” Fischer concluded, “whether they’re military, whether they’re natural, whether they’re economic, this is God’s way of calling a nation back to repentance. The only question is will we listen.”