Does God send earthquakes to punish mankind?
Does God use natural disasters to bring judgement on sinful mankind? We watch the news and see families whose homes were destroyed by an earthquake and our hearts break. How can a loving God allow this to happen? Is He responsible for the death of millions throughout history? The answer to that question is no. God does not use natural disasters to implement His wrath. When Adam and Eve rebelled and brought sin into the world, this sin not only affected people, but all of creation.
For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Romans 8:20-22
God loves people and His original plan before sin was that of life, not death. God created people for the purpose of having a wonderful and loving relationship with Him.
Natural disasters had their start after God’s judgement of a worldwide flood in Noah’s day. A good portion of the water that covered the earth came from the “great deep”, Genesis 7:11, and split the land mass into the continents that we see today. This worldwide event set the stage for volcanic activity as well as earthquakes.
Simply put, natural disasters are the earth doing natural things that sometimes happen where people are.