The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

A prominent Family Island prophet from the Pentecostal community is purported to have predicted the coming of Hurricane Dorian to Grand Bahama as divine judgment. If this claim is accurate, his recent prophecy regarding New Providence and Andros conjures up a sense of foreboding for The Bahamas – seeing that the capital city is located in the former. The country has already been dealt a harsh blow with its second and third largest economies being brought to their knees by Dorian to the extent that the unemployment rate on Grand Bahama now stands at 50 percent. In Abaco, I would assume that it is much worse. I shudder to think about the ramifications of New Providence and Paradise Island being pummelled by a major hurricane, considering the many Over-the-Hill shanty town communities in Nassau as well as flood prone areas such as Pinewood Gardens. If a Category Five storm like Dorian could pummel Freeport, despite its strict Grand Bahama Port Authority building codes, what would it do to Bain and Grants Town, Englerston and Farm Road? That's a scary thought. Judgment can be averted by repentance, and a return to our Christian heritage.

With an official tally of 70 deaths and an estimated $3.4 billion in damages to Grand Bahama and Abaco, Grand Bahamians, who are accustomed to weathering major hurricanes, view Hurricane Dorian as an unusual storm, because it lingered for three days over the North West Bahamas. To Grand Bahamians, it looked like an intelligent mind was steering Dorian. God is good. Yet how does one reconcile God's goodness with the Dorian tragedy? Herein lies the role of Gottfried Leibniz's theodicy, which argues that this is the best of all possible worlds. The only other alternative would be a world of automatons, which would be dehumanising to human beings. Free will is intrinsic to our humanity. God is sovereign. Yet in His infinite wisdom, He chose to grant to His creation, man, free will. Man exercised that freedom in rebelling against his Creator in Eden. As a result of that initial rebellion, man must now contend with the reality of moral and natural evil, Hurricane Dorian being of the latter.

So was Dorian judgment on Grand Bahama and Abaco? Yes, but only insofar that God lifted His hedge of protection from both islands. Many Grand Bahamians believe that Dorian was demonic, amid reports of Grand Bahamians and Abaconians seeing demonic entities and voodoo paraphernalia during the storm (this writer being one of them). They believe that Satan was behind the storm. And there is biblical grounds for such an hypothesis. In Job 1:18-19, Satan murders the children of the Old Testament patriarch by sending either a tornado or a hurricane. In Luke 8:22-25, Mark 4:35-41 and Matthew 8:23-27, Jesus rebukes the tempest, which has led many Bible scholars to believe that Satan was behind it. In Ephesians 2:2, Satan is called the "prince of the power of the air." This implies that he has the ability to manipulate the weather, within the parameters of God's sovereign will. Granted, this theory is politically incorrect to some people. But many Grand Bahamians believe that a demonic mastermind was behind Hurricane Dorian. To them, Dorian was much more than just a natural phenomenon.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport,

Grand Bahama

December 8, 2019.