Seeing God in the Texas Floods
Just hours before sunrise on Independence Day, a 20-foot wall of water, illuminated only by flashes of lightning, surged down the Guadalupe River and hit an all-girls Christian summer camp at Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas. The campers were told before they went to bed that a severe thunderstorm was forecast, but they had no idea the river would flood.
“We went to bed thinking it was just a normal thunderstorm,” Callie McAlary told Fox News. “One minute you see lightning strike next to your cabin, and next to you, you hear water’s coming up and you have kids running just trying to get to other cabins, trying to get to safety. Luckily, my cabin was one of the few cabins that did not get water, but the cabins in front of us did get some water.”
At least 27 children and counselors died in the flash floods, and six people are still missing. Yet the Camp Mystic tragedy was just part of the devastation. The Guadalupe River is 230 miles long, so many other areas were also inundated. All totaled, the death toll is at least 120 people. It could be double that, as 170 people are still missing. Texas Governor Greg Abbott noted that the area is popular with campers, so the fact that the flood happened on Independence Day made it particularly deadly.
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The thunderstorm dropped 6.5 inches of rain in three hours, making it a 1 in 100 years rainfall for the area. Central Texas usually gets only 7 to 9 inches of rain all summer. But it wasn’t just the severe storm that caused the tragedy. The thunderstorm ended a six-year drought; and because it is difficult for bone-dry soil to absorb rain, the precipitation cascaded along the Guadalupe River.
Something similar happened in New Mexico on July 9 when heavy rain sent a wall of water cascading down the Rio Ruidoso, killing three people, including two children. Meanwhile, Tropical Depression Chantel hit North Carolina, killing one person and destroying many homes.
Predictably, the corporate media blamed climate change for increasing the frequency of extreme rainfall and warned that President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill would make disasters like the one that hit Camp Mystic more frequent by cutting funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Yet the primary reason behind both the Texas and New Mexico floods was not a failure to predict thunderstorms, it was the devastating drought that baked the soil into a dry sheet.
In Leviticus 26, God promised that if the nations of Israel (the United States and Britain primarily) turned away from His law, then He would “break the pride” of their power and make their “heaven as iron” and their “earth as brass” (verse 19). He also promised that Israel would be robbed of its children (verse 22). Brass-like earth is what caused the flash floods, and children were among the victims.
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Of course, the fact that these flash floods hit a summer camp does not mean that the campers at Camp Mystic were more sinful than anyone else. When Jesus was asked why 18 people were killed when a tower collapsed in Siloam, He answered, “[T]hink ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:4-5). Similarly, the girls in the path of the Guadalupe flood were not necessarily singled out for chastisement. Yet why didn’t God intervene to protect them? The Bible says God allows weather disasters to warn people to repent.
Tragedies like Camp Mystic are meant to get the nation’s attention.
“[A]n alarming revolution is beginning to occur in the weather,” the late Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in 1956. “Hurricanes, floods, sectional droughts are fast increasing. And now, the very next prophesied event—to strike in the full fury of its climax before our democratic nations are invaded by the resurrected Roman Empire—is a tremendous universal famine over America, Britain and northwestern Europe caused by unprecedented drought and floods. And immediately in its wake will come the most frightful epidemic of diseases ever to attack our peoples!”
The fact that 27 percent of the United States is currently in a drought shows that God is already starting to break the pride of America’s power. Ezekiel 5:12 prophesies that a third of Americans will die from pestilence and famine if the nation does not repent. That is more than 100 million people, a huge sum that will include Christians and children. God allows tragedies like Camp Mystic to wake up people before it is too late. The punishment will escalate if His warnings are ignored.
God desires to teach all people the way to peace and prosperity. If mankind would heed God’s commandments, it wouldn’t have to experience such horrific disasters. But the human heart is hard and too proud to admit it does not know the way to peace, happiness and stability. Tragically, God must allow men to learn from their choices until they finally cry out to Him for instruction. Then He will resurrect all those who have died to show them the path to prosperity and peace.
To learn more, read our free booklet Why ‘Natural’ Disasters?