I live in western North Carolina, and our region is still recovering from the almost unbelievable devastation caused by the flooding and high winds from the remains of Hurricane Helene. It was in the aftermath of all that tragedy and catastrophe that some serious-minded Christians started asking, “How do we interpret this storm through the lens of the Bible?” In order to answer that question, I preached a two-part sermon entitled “Weather” in which I explained just exactly what the Bible teaches about the topic. Here now, on the blog, I’d like to use three posts to share that scriptural information.

I. The Source of Weather

Where does weather come from? The answer is: Weather comes from God. There are many passages where the Bible teaches this, and one of them is Job 37:5-6. Those verses say:

God thunders marvelously with His voice; He does great things which we cannot comprehend. For He says to the snow, “Fall on the earth”; Likewise to the gentle rain and the heavy rain of His strength. (N.K.J.V.)

A similar passage is Job chapter 37: 9-12, which says:

From the chamber of the south comes the whirlwind, And cold from the scattering winds of the north. By the breath of God ice is given, And the broad waters are frozen. Also with moisture He saturates the thick cloud; He scatters His bright clouds. And they swirl about, being turned by His guidance, That they may do whatever He commands them On the face of the whole earth. (N.K.J.V.)

Since God is sovereign over all of His creation, it should come as no surprise that He is the source of weather. Nahum 1:3 says the Lord has His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet. Psalm 148:8 says that hail, snow, and stormy winds fulfill His word. In Jeremiah 14:22, the people of Judah (Israel’s southern kingdom) are suffering from a drought, and they cry out to God: “Are there any among the idols of the nations that can cause rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Are You not He, O Lord our God? Therefore we will wait for You, since You have made all these.”

Someone might ask, “But can’t Satan manipulate the weather?” The answer is: Yes, he can, but he can only do it in those instances wherein God allows him to do it. Actually, though, we have just one instance in the Bible wherein we are plainly told that God even allowed Satan to mess with the weather. That one instance is found in the book of Job as God allows Satan to attempt to break Job from worshiping God.

As part of that breaking process, Satan sends what the Bible calls “a great wind” from the wilderness to strike the four corners of the house in which Job’s ten children are gathered. That wind causes the house to collapse in on itself and all ten of Job’s children to be killed by the collapsing. Again, though, that story is the only passage where the Bible plainly says that God even allowed Satan to manipulate the weather.

Therefore, let’s not be so quick to blame hurricanes, heavy rains, high winds, tornados, snowstorms, times of drought, times of intense heat, times of intense cold, and all of the other types of weather we experience on the devil. No, the Bible teaches that God is the source of weather. Even if Satan does ever get a chance to mess with the weather in any way, it’s only because God allows Him to do so.

Admittedly, many an individual might not believe in a God who causes weather that creates so many problems for so many people and even causes so many deaths. Such a person might say, “That’s not the God I know.” Well, my response to such a person would be, “You don’t get to pick who God is or how God operates. God is God, whether you like Him or not, and there is only one true God. He is the God described in the Bible, and the Bible teaches that He is the source of weather (good weather and bad weather).”

Coming at this topic another way, some of you conspiracy theorists out there might be thinking, “But mankind has now reached a scientific point where we can create the weather ourselves. Through geoengineering we can seed clouds and create hurricanes. So, our government is secretly creating these powerful, devastating hurricanes in an attempt to bankrupt America by crippling our economy so that the way can be paved for us to become a part of the new world order under one world government.” To that I’ll just say, “Alice, if you want to follow that white rabbit down into that rabbit hole, don’t bother to take your Bible along with you because you won’t need it down there.” Why not? It’s because the Bible teaches that God is the source of weather.

     II. The Start of Weather

Did you know the pre-sin earth of Adam and Eve did not have weather the way we have it today? Genesis 2:4-7, verses that describe the early days of the creation week before God created Adam, say:

This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (N.K.J.V., emphasis mine)

The earth as God originally created it (Genesis 1:1) was not a finished product. It was there, sitting in space, but it needed detail work. As evidence of that, Genesis 1:2 says it was “without form.” That means that the earth didn’t yet have the circular shape it has now. Additionally, Genesis 1:2 tells us that the earth at that time was totally covered in water that was no doubt many miles deep.

It was on day 2 of the creation week that God cut what Genesis 1:6-8 calls a “firmament” right through the midst of all that water that was covering the earth. Genesis 1:8 says that God called this firmament “Heaven” (N.K.J.V., K.J.V., E.S.V., R.S.V.) The Hebrew word that gets translated “firmament” literally means “an expanse.” Basically, the firmament is what you see when you walk outside and look up either in the daytime or the nighttime. Genesis 1:14-17 says in reference to day 4 of the creation week that God set the sun, the moon, and the stars in the firmament. Likewise, Genesis 1:20 says in reference to day 5 of the creation week that birds fly in the firmament.

What God’s creating of the firmament did to all that water that was covering the earth was trap some of it above the firmament and leave some of it trapped below the firmament. The water trapped below the firmament was left to become the earth’s oceans, rivers, and streams. That’s why it makes perfect sense that after God had created that firmament on day 2, day 3 begins with God saying, “Let the waters under the heavens (and it’s the same Hebrew word that gets translated as “firmament”) be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear…” (N.K.J.V.)

That only left to be accounted for all the water that had gotten trapped above the firmament. And what happened to all of that water? It created a great canopy of water (probably in vaporous form) that allowed the earth to have what we might think of as a perfect, greenhouse-type environment. Consequently, what the Bible describes in those days is an earth that was for all intents and purposes without weather. It didn’t rain or snow, and there were no hurricanes or tornados. Again, according to Genesis 2:4-7, the whole planet got watered by way of a mist that rose up from the ground. The conditions were idyllic.

As for when weather started to appear upon the earth, that happened during the flood of Noah. Genesis 7:10-12 says:

And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights. (N.K.J.V.)

Scholars tell us that if it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, that still wouldn’t produce enough water to fully cover the entire earth. That means that other factors were involved with the great flood, factors that produced a whole lot of flood water. And the Bible tells us right here in Genesis 7:10-12 what those factors were.

First, verse 11 says all the fountains of the great deep were broken up. That breaking up resulted in an untold amount of water bursting forth upward from deep inside the earth. Evidently, that water had been trapped in there since God had created the earth in Genesis 1:1. Second, verse 11 also says the windows of “heaven” were opened. And according to Genesis 1:8, what was it that God called the firmament? “Heaven.” You see, during the great flood a great deluge of water came down from the sky as that vast canopy of moisture that had been trapped up there above the firmament since day 2 of the creation week was released and allowed to fall as rain. That closed the door on the earth having that protective canopy of moisture above it, and it left the earth ripe for what we now know as “weather” to begin.

Dr. Henry Morris was a highly reputable scientist who earned his PhD in hydraulic engineering from the University of Minnesota, and he was also a devout Christian and a defender of the Bible’s record of history. In regards to the earth’s natural cycle that began after the great flood and continues working today to produce rain upon the earth, Morris wrote this:

The present cycle, which began at the time of the great Flood, involves global and continental air mass movements, and annual and seasonal temperature changes…This present cycle centers around the solar evaporation of ocean waters, transportation to the continents in the atmospheric circulation, condensation and precipitation in the form of rain and snow, and transportation to the ocean via rivers.

And so, with this first post from this series, we have looked at what the Bible says about the source of weather and the start of our weather. The source of weather is God, and the start of our weather was the flood of Noah. In the next post, we’ll identify what the Bible says about the service of weather and the storms of weather. Until then, I hope you will stay tuned.