Pat Robertson’s claim that yesterday’s dive in the stock-market was just a foretaste of God’s judgment for federal funding of Planned Parenthood and the legalization of abortion was nothing new for the televangelist, who has made a career out of explaining such things as how a lack of prayer was to blame for a spate of tornadoes in 2012 and why a Pennsylvania town could face divine wrath for teaching the theory of evolution in schools.
The “700 Club” host has alleged that natural disasters and even terrorist attacks occur because God will no longer protect a country from harm or will actively seek to destroy it when it legalizes abortion, approves gay rights or, in Haiti’s case, makes a deal with the Devil.
Here are the five worst times Robertson claimed a disaster was punishment from God:
1) Liberals Caused The September 11 Attacks
Just two days after the September 11 attacks, Robertson invited Religious Right leader Jerry Falwell onto his program to discuss the attacks, which Falwell promptly blamed on “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America.” These groups, Falwell claimed, caused God “to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.”
“I totally concur,” Robertson responded:
2) Legal Abortion Caused Hurricane Katrina
Days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, Robertson explained that God was no longer protecting the U.S. from danger because of the legalization of abortion. “Have we found we are unable somehow to defend ourselves against some of the attacks that are coming against us, either by terrorists or now by natural disaster?” he asked.
“We’re going to have to pay a price one of these days for what we’re doing,” he said years later regarding legal abortion. “Let’s hope that … the tide will begin to turn and we can avert the wrath of the Lord, but it will come upon this nation unless we do something.”
3) Colonial-Era Devil Pact Caused Haitian Earthquake
One day after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti took hundreds of thousands of lives, Robertson concluded that the devastating quake was divine retribution for Haitians’ ancestors having “swore a pact to the Devil” when they were rebelling against French colonial rule.
4 ) Gay People Are Inviting A Meteor
Back in 1998, Robertson was furious about a “Gay Day” taking place at Disney World and delivered a warning to Orlando that the festival would “bring terrorist bombs, it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.”
While Orlando is still standing, Robertson has continued to warn that gay rights in the U.S. will bring about divine wrath so severe that “when the blow comes, it’s going to be horrible.”
“Sodomy. In all history, as far as I can tell, any nation that embraces this so-called lifestyle, and that legalizes it, celebrates it, protects it, is on the ash-can of history,” he declared.
5) Mideast Peace Talks Cause Storms In America
Robertson has credited efforts to create a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians with everything from ice storms in Oklahoma to the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport getting “wiped out” by a storm and Ariel Sharon’s debilitating stroke and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
“Every time the United States gets involved in some kind of a pressure on Israel to split their land there’s some natural disaster that happens here in America,” Robertson has said, most recently warning Secretary of State John Kerry that he is “asking for the wrath of Almighty God to fall on this nation” for his treatment of Israel
“I think this is headed for disaster for the United States,” he said. “We should do everything we can to restrain our leaders from this course of folly and it is a course of folly and it will result in terrible suffering for people in the United States.”
