Sword and famine and wild beasts and plague!
"For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: How much worse will it be when I send against Jerusalem My four dreadful judgments: sword and famine and wild beasts and plague — to kill its men and their animals!" Ezekiel 14:21
(Edward Payson)
National judgments are always the consequence of national sins. It is indispensably necessary to the perfection of God's moral government, that it should extend to nations and communities, as well as to individuals. This, I conceive, is too evident to require proof; for how could God be considered as the moral Governor of the world — if nations and communities were exempt from His government?
(Matthew Henry)
God has a variety of sore judgments with which to punish sinful nations — and He has them all at His command and inflicts which nations He pleases. God often chastises sinful nations by bringing the sword of war upon them — and He gives it its commission and orders what execution it shall do.
(John Calvin)
War is one of God's judgments.
(William Greenhill)
It is God who calls out the sword, and causes it to come: "When I bring the sword upon a land!" Ezekiel 33:2. He is the Lord of hosts, and commissions armies to make invasions where He please. Eminent wickedness brings eminent judgments. Wars do not come upon any nation by accident — but by the righteous providence of God.
(Martyn Lloyd-Jones)
I regard the two World Wars which we have experienced in the 20th century, as God's punishment of the apostasy of the last century. I see no other adequate explanation.
(Augustine)
Nothing happens, unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen.
(Thomas Watson)
Sinners may oppose God's ways — but not His wrath.
(James Durham)
Let us stay our faith here — that our Lord is still working in all these confusions. And when matters are turned upside down as to human appearance — our blessed Lord knows well what He is doing, and will make all things most certainly, infallibly, and unalterably to work for His own glory, and for the good of His people.