In March of 2020, the Lord spoke to me and said, “Pray for the East Wind.” (I detailed that experience here). Having no idea what such a thing meant, I discovered when I opened my bible that the East Wind is mentioned all throughout scripture. A few examples are:

• “By the east wind, you shattered the ships of Tarshish” (Psalm 48:7, ESV)
• “I will scatter them as with an east wind before the enemy; I will show them My back and not My face in the day of their disaster” (Jeremiah 18:17, NKJV)
• “The east wind carries [a man] away, and he is gone; it sweeps him out of his place” (Job 27:21, NKJV)
• “Measure by measure, by exile you contended with [Israel]; he removed them with his fierce breath in the day of the east wind” (Isaiah 27:8, ESV)
• “Though he flourishes among the reeds, an east wind will come, the wind of the Lord coming up from the wilderness; and his fountain will become dry and his spring will dry up; it will plunder his treasury of every precious article” (Hosea 13:15, NASB)

One more noteworthy scripture to include concerning the East Wind is:

“And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and Jehovah caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all the night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided (Exodus 14:21, ASV)

The East Wind is also known as the Wind of the Lord. It signifies God’s judgment, or His sudden intervention in the affairs of men.

In nature, wind and weather usually approaches us from the west. An east wind is therefore an unusual and often violent phenomenon in the natural order.

Fast forward four years

About six months ago, the Lord reminded me of the word He’d given me four years prior. It was as though He was saying, “I told you to pray for the East Wind. I didn’t tell you to stop.” Over time, this clear word from the Lord had ebbed from my thoughts and I’d ceased to pray this way.

So I have been regularly praying for the Lord to send His east wind: to ambush the plans of the enemy, to intervene in the affairs of men, and to execute His judgments on systems and entities and institutions

God’s judgments bring about His righteous correction

Many Christians and secularists alike tend to think of God’s judgments as undesirable or even cruel. Some suppose that judgment is synonymous with hail, lightening, earthquakes, and floods. The scriptural pattern of God’s judgments often involved His people being invaded by foreigners who did not share their customs, took over their resources, and oppressed them.

We cannot ignore that Peter told the church that “Judgment begins with the household of faith” (1 Peter 4:17). A pastor I know said in 2021 that it seemed as though God used covid as a judgment against the church, on account of how many congregations shut their doors. Some never reopened. Doctors and church leaders alike penned a similar sobering word to the church in the book A Sacred Trust Broken: Coronavirus and the Leadership of the Church.

Furthermore, can you remember any time like the last few years in which so many pastors have been exposed and/or resigned because of sin?

I have been pondering God’s judgments and justice these last several months and will be doing a deep dive into the subject in the coming weeks. Perhaps because of our current culture, which favors emphasis on the grace and mercy aspects of God’s character, there is very little preaching and teaching on His judgment.

“The sum of Your word is truth, And every one of Your righteous judgments is everlasting” scripture says in Psalm 119:160. We need the word of God in its entirety. Because God’s nature is good, and His plans are always righteous, we need not shrink back from the reality of His judgments.