“On November 14, 1680, and again on December 24, a comet blazed a lonely, majestic trail across the European skies. From time immemorial, comets had been perceived as celestial signs …”. That’s from page 185 of Phillip Blom’s Nature’s Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present (2019; see Amazon for the complicated publishing info, first published in German in 2017). The book has an entire sixty-page section on how the 17th century, the dawn of the age of science, grappled with the nature and significance of comets, in particular the remarkable Great Comet of 1680, which was visible during the day and, at night, covered half the sky. The image at the top of this post is a depiction of the comet seen over Rotterdam that year. Are comets God’s rather opaque way of telling humankind to repent? Or are they entirely natural phenomena, not any sort of message or sign?
Pierre Bayle was a leading voice in the natural phenomena camp. He wrote an entire book about it in 1683: Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet. However, the great majority of the masses and most leading churchmen at the time all regarded the Great Comet as a sign of divine displeasure. Bayle dismissed such views as simple superstition. Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, comets, eclipses — we now regard these as just the natural workings of our planet and our solar system. Don’t we? I’m working up to a discussion of Divine Providence, the question of the degree of God’s intervention in the natural order of the Universe, and what the LDS view is on that point. Here’s how Bayle laid out the question in his comet book, in response to panicked inquiries about the events of 1680:
I found myself incessantly exposed to the questions of several curious, or alarmed, persons. Insofar as I could, I reassured those who were bothered by this supposed bad presage; yet I gained but little by philosophical reasonings. The response was always made to me that God shows forth these great phenomena in order to give sinners time to ward off, by their penitence, the evils that hang over their heads. I therefore believed it would be very pointless to reason further, unless I were to employ an argument making it manifest that the attributes of God do not permit him to intend comets to have such an effect.
Nature’s Mutiny, p. 188, quoting Bayle, Various Thoughts (English trans., SUNY press, 2000), p. 13.
Bayle thinks the issue turns on the “attributes of God” or, in plainer terms, the question of whether God uses comets (or earthquakes or hurricanes or eclipses) to tell us to repent. The Bible comes down rather clearly on a strong version of Providence: “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matt. 10:29-30). Then there are the wise men of Matthew 2 who followed the “star in the east,” which led them first to Herod in Judea, then to baby Jesus in Bethlehem.
So what’s your personal view of Providence? It’s not just about signs in the sky. If prayers move God to end a drought, that’s Providence. If God heals a sick child after a blessing, that’s Providence. And yes, if God helps you find your lost car keys, that’s Providence. To help you think this through, here is some helpful direction from Elder Oaks at a BYU devotional in 1995:
Some adversities are individual. Others are common to large numbers of our Heavenly Father’s children. During the last decade there have been many examples of large-scale adversities affecting tens or hundreds of thousands or millions. Only a few can be mentioned. In addition to wars in many nations, we have had earthquakes in Japan, California, China, Armenia, and Mexico; hurricanes or tornadoes in Florida and the central United States; volcanic eruptions in the Philippines; tidal waves in Nicaragua; forest fires in various western states; flooding in India and in the Mississippi valley; and famine and pestilence in Africa and elsewhere.
Okay, adversity. What’s God got to do with it? Elder Oaks continues:
These huge catastrophes are tragedies, but they may have another significance. The Lord uses adversities to send messages to his children. Isaiah prophesied that in the last days the Lord would visit all nations with great natural disasters (see Isaiah 29:6; 2 Nephi 27:1–2). In modern revelation, the Lord speaks of calling upon the nations of the earth by the mouth of his servants and also “by the voice of thunderings, and by the voice of lightnings, and by the voice of tempests, and by the voice of earthquakes, and great hailstorms, and by the voice of famines and pestilences of every kind” (D&C 43:25). … Surely these great adversities are not random or without some eternal purpose or effect. They can turn men’s hearts to God.
As I write this post, hurricane Dorian is pummeling the Bahamas. In just the last decade or two, we have seen hurricanes wreak havoc in modern cities like New Orleans and Houston. And if the Little Ice Age challenged Americans and Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries, think about the impact that global climate change is starting to have on the world and what it will be like for your grandchildren in the 22nd century. So this is not an academic or theoretical question.
Furthermore, I acknowledge that this is no casual or lighthearted inquiry. Those who have prayed in foxholes or hurricanes and been delivered have deep feelings about their experience. Those who have seen a child or loved one recover from severe illness or injury after a blessing likewise have deep feelings. Yet the theological issue remains. Is God in the whirlwind? Is God in the comet? Is God in the still small voice or that whisper of silence? Does God, after Creation, work entirely through natural law or laws of nature? Or does God not work at all in the natural world?
Wheat & Tares 
“Does God, after Creation, work entirely through natural law or laws of nature? Or does God not work at all in the natural world?”
Why is it so common to make questions either/or? Often, there are elements of truth in both questions. Maybe a particular storm is entirely natural, and maybe God is okay with using it to help people remember about important matters.
I’ve increasingly wondered if the effects of Climate Change are tied to the prophecies of disasters, famine and pestilence in the Last Days. Is what the prophets saw the consequences of man’s treatment of the earth and the increasing intensity of these events? An interesting thought.
Interesting topic! I am just a small mortal man, subject to much greater power/forces that I can comprehend. As to whether there is a God at all that is orchestrating this, I can’t say. My take is that these are all natural (except where we may be a contributor), and whether God spun up these things millenia ago for us today, or got them going immediately, seems rather moot. I don’t like the rhetoric of today’s church which makes us look mideaval in our beliefs. I think it’s important for us to realize our powerlessness, but ascribing them to gods (both loving and/or evil) because of our actions seems to be a stretch. Nature happens to the good and the bad as even the bible describes. If we took the “church” view, then the great evils described by today’s church should have required some sort of divine reckoning to places like Hitlers Germany, Stalin’s Russia, New Yok, San Francisco, Rio de Janero, etc.
While I don’t discount the “spiritual” experiences that others or for that matter, special experiences that I have felt that I had, I just don’t follow the God version of natural events.
Dave, if God is trying to send a message to the wicked, then sending natural disasters that inordinately affect the poor and downtrodden is a peculiar way of expressing his displeasure. I don’t care much for the idea that God is using the most vulnerable among us as some sort of spiritual whipping boy to call us to repentance.
I don’t claim to really know much, but here’s a thought train I follow when I think of whether God is involved in details or aloof (please don’t get squeamish on me — even though some of this might be uncomfortable).
As my screen name suggests, I am — shall we say — towards the “vertically challenged” end of the distribution of men’s height/stature. I sometimes ask myself if God made me short or not. If God made me short, and I think through the natural processes that are part of how tall a man might be:
1) Nutrition is often cited as part of being short and tall. Was God causing or influencing my mom’s choices when she placed food in front of me as a child?
2) Anatomically, stature is pretty much decided by when the growth plates in the bones fuse. Did God cause my growth plates to fuse at the foreordained height, or did He let them fuse on their own?
3) Of course, genetics is also a big player in this (this is where it might get squeamish). My genes come from my parents. Was God present at the point of conception choosing which sperm fused with the egg? For that matter, was He present a couple days earlier at ovulation actively choosing which egg should be released?
4) Was He actively present during the meiosis process that produced each of those gametes, choosing which genes would end up in each gamete?
5) We sometimes speak against the idea of “soul mates” — that God does not have predetermined couples who will absolutely be together. Could God have created me without somehow controlling who my parents would be? Of course, the history of my genes goes back way before my parents — was God manipulating relationships for several generations to make sure that my specific parents (with their unique genetic combinations) would come together?
Ultimately I don’t know how much God actively manipulates our world and how much He just lets it happen according to the natural laws in place. When I think through this particular sequence, I tend to conclude that God probably is not involved in every detail of life and the universe — that much just happens because random stuff (good and bad and neutral) happens. I cannot discount the possibility that God may specifically intervene in some situations, but that He generally does not. I don’t know how to tell when God is intervening and when He is letting stuff happen.
What Not a Cougar said.
Elder Oaks has never been on my list of “most compassionate apostles.” His remarks cited in this OP again confirm why. Not a Cougar hits in on the head.
Natural disasters as evidence of god’s rage/displeasure/judgment is an idea born of ignorance. I would say it comes from ancient times and leave it at that, but apparently we still spew it, just like the Evangelicals.
I recommend *The Mormon Concept of God* in the Summer 1984 Dialogue. https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V17N02_67.pdf
Demographers and social scientists would likely tell us that 1) increases in population and 2) people living in areas where natural disasters are common, have more to do with how populations interact with natural disasters than anything that god may or may not do.
The significance of a cyclone or tropical storm hitting Florida or the Gulf Coast is exponentially more damaging today than it would be in 1680. So I guess I have a problem with the attribution some make that god is angry with some group of people or something that they are doing. In reality any severe natural disaster in a population dense area is going to result in catastrophic loss.
In the April 2016 GC, Elder Oaks spoke about opposition. Toward the end he said God does not prevent all disasters but will sometimes turn them aside and he cited a dangerous cyclone that almost interfered with the rededication of a temple in Fiji in February of 2016. (Actually the cyclone would have really only interfered with the travel schedule of the Apostle assigned to rededicate the temple since the temple and members would have been in Fiji with or without the cyclone.) Elder Oaks then notes the deaths from the Belgium airport bombing and the fact none of the 4 missionaries at the bombing were killed. (He forgot to mention the senior missionary who was seriously injured was only there b/c of the mission policy that boy missionaries cannot be trusted with girl missionaries even when doing something as simple as dropping a girl missionary off at an airport. Yes, the senior missionary was only there as a babysitter and it almost cost him his life-but thankfully he survived.) In citing these two examples of being. spared from disaster Elder Oaks failed to mention a surprise natural disaster that killed a sister missionary during the same time period. In February of 2016 (same time as the Fiji cyclone) a surprise snow storm hit the Pittsburgh area. One Pittsburgh Area school district sent their students home early. One of the school buses plowed through a stop sign and ran into a car with 4 sister missionaries, killing one of them. I suppose by Elder Oaks metrics the fact that only one sister was killed due to the snow storm when there were 4 sisters in the car counts as some type of mitigation. Perhaps Eder Oaks was not aware of the Pittsburgh disaster when he mentioned the Fiji cyclone and Belgium airport bombings. I wonder how Elder Oaks explains a God who diverts a cyclone for the sake of an apostle’s travel schedule but couldn’t delay a snow storm by only 30-minutes to spare the life of a sister missionary?
I think human brains are hard wired to find patterns and tell stories. Even if those patterns often connect dots that aren’t really connected. Having witnessed Haley’s Comet and a total solar eclipse, I can say that such celestial are overwhelming awe inspiring and almost beg to have greater meaning attached to them. So I am not at all surprised that people will want to find omens in their appearance, even though they are natural, but rare phenomena.
I am more likely to see God in the human outreach that can occur after a natural disaster like a flood or hurrican than in the disaster itself. Our city endured a terrible flood about a decade ago. I don’t think God was in the flood, but I think I saw the image of God within the many people in our commynity who spent many many hours helping muck out homes of their friends and neighbors and repair and replace the terrible damage that occurred.
I’m inclined to attribute natural disasters to nature, rather than Gods attention. Where I live it is the first week of spring and the temperature is 35c, and a daughter who is a fire officer tells me the ground moisture is in single figures, the lowest ever recorded. If we have a bad bush fire season it will be because of these conditions, which we attribute to climate change.
If Elder Oaks could give a talk about adressing climate change that might be more relavent to our futures than blaming God.
How much extreme weather will it take to get people to believe, and elect people who will act on climate change.
A few years ago our bishops wife at the time blamed bush fire deaths on the progressive state government. Gods punishment. An excuse not to show compassion?
Since the title that started this discussion was “God and Comets,” does anyone know if Joseph Smith ever saw a real comet in the sky, and if so what did he have to say about it?
In Genesis and the PoGP, when God creates the cosmos, he (they?) specifically states that one of their purposes is to “let them be for signs” (Gen 1:14). John Pratt (ex-LDS) has argued extensively in favor of this view.
Many early apostles, including Heber C. Kimball and Parley P. Pratt interpreted astronomical events as specific signs from God.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Not a Cougar, great point — it’s sad but inevitable that natural disasters strike the poor and downtrodden harder than others. Somehow I would think a malevolent divine sign would be a bit more selective. Maybe a capital gains surcharge tax or a pesky and unrepairable electrical malfunction that strikes BMWs and Audis.
LDS Aussie, yes there are more people in the path of some natural disasters, but in developed countries there are better facilities to withstand events and respond quickly to people in distress. I think that sort of balances out.
RB, yes, once you start calling out particular episodes as God intervening for the benefit of this or that small group, then you have to explain why ten or twenty other people at least as deserving did not get a divine thumb on the scales. Those on the receiving end of a saving grace (and most of us have at one time or another) can certainly be grateful. Just don’t build a theory on those scattered episodes.
AEM, great question about Joseph Smith and comets. Haley’s Comet visited us in 1835 and was apparently quite visible, so there are probably accounts recorded in LDS journals for that period.
“. . . Joseph Smith ever saw a real comet . . . ?”
Not a comet, but for a meteor shower, there was the morning of November 13, 1833:
“. . . in the morning at 4 o’ clock I was awoke by Brother Davis knocking at my door saying Brother Joseph come git up and see the signs in the heavens and I arose and beheld to my great Joy the stars fall from heaven . . .?
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-1832-1834/19